No. 1864

Chicken Fricassee a la Favorite

Fricassee de Poulet a la Favorite

Prepare and cut up the chickens the same as for the plain fricassee (No. 1861); soak the pieces for half an hour, then drain and return them to the saucepan to moisten with white broth (No. 194a): cook the chicken, drain it in a colander, and run the liquid through a napkin; put it back on the fire to reduce to half adding eight gills of veloute sauce (No. 415), then reduce once more until the sauce adheres to the spoon, afterward finish with egg-yolks and butter. Strain through a tammy, and keep hot in a bain-marie. Wash thoroughly the pieces of cooked chicken in cold water; pare nicely, and place them in the sauce; after they are well heated, dress and garnish around with a cluster of carrot balls half an inch in diameter, blanched and cooked in white stock (No. 194a) and a little sugar, also small white onions cooked in white broth. Decorate the outside with small flat egg-plant croquettes containing mushrooms and truffles, and use also trussed crawfish for the ornamentation.

← No. 1863 Chicken Fricassee a la Chevaliere Chicken No. 1865 Chicken Fricassee a la Lucius →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has velouté, white broth and a bain-marie standing ready, and he cross-references half the work to other numbers. Read as a method rather than a shopping list, it is a classic white fricassee finished with an egg liaison.

The hinge: the liaisonOnce the egg yolks and butter go in, the sauce must not boil. Temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce, return them off the heat, and bring it back only to about 180F/82C, until it coats the spoon. A boil will curdle it into scrambled egg in cream.
Eight gillsA gill is half a cup, so eight gills of velouté is one quart (about 950 ml). That reduces substantially before the liaison; expect roughly a pint to a pint and a half of finished sauce, enough for two chickens.
Soaking and washingThe half-hour soak is dégorger — cold water draws out blood so the meat stays white. The later washing of the cooked pieces in cold water removes coagulated albumen and scum before they go into the sauce. Both are cosmetic, aimed at an immaculate white fricassee, and both can be skipped without harming the flavour. If you do the cold wash, get the pieces back into hot sauce promptly and heat them through to 165F/74C rather than letting them sit at room temperature.
White brothNo. 194a is Ranhofer's white broth: a pale, unbrowned stock, not a dark or heavily reduced one. A light, clear chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will grey the sauce.
VeloutéNo. 415 is white stock thickened with a blond roux and simmered until clean. To make a quart from scratch, roughly 2 oz butter, 2 oz flour and 5 cups stock, cooked down and skimmed, will do.
Tammy and bain-marieA tammy is a cloth strainer wrung between two people; a fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a fine sieve followed by cheesecloth, gives the same result. The bain-marie is simply a covered container in hot water — the safest place to hold an egg-thickened sauce.
Carrot balls and onionsHalf-inch balls cut with a small parisienne scoop, blanched, then simmered in white stock with a pinch of sugar until glazed. The onions are pearl or small boiling onions, cooked white in stock with no colour taken.
The garnish, honestlyFlat eggplant croquettes bound with mushroom and truffle, plus whole trussed crawfish set around the rim, are Delmonico's service, not dinner. The dish loses nothing if you reduce the garnish to the glazed carrots and onions and a few sautéed mushrooms.
YieldTwo 3 lb birds, cut up as for the plain fricassee, serve six to eight as written; scale the quart of velouté down by half for a single chicken.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this page shows how the book is built: a run of numbered fricassees — à la Chevalière, à la Favorite, à la Lucius — each a small variation on the plain fricassee at No. 1861, distinguished chiefly by its garnish. That was standard practice in the grande cuisine Ranhofer learned in France, where a name like à la Favorite generally implied a recognisable set of accompaniments to anyone trained in the system, and the kitchen could produce a dozen apparently different dishes from one base sauce. The white fricassee itself is much older than Delmonico's, well established in French cookery by the seventeenth century, and it stayed white on purpose: the flour-thickened, egg-enriched sauce and the pale, unbrowned meat were the point, which is why Ranhofer soaks the raw pieces, washes the cooked ones, and calls for colourless stock at every stage.