No. 1866

Chicken Fricassee a la Waleski

Fricassee de Poulet a la Waleski

Take three medium chickens each one to weigh two pound and a half; cut both up into seven pieces each, the two legs, two fillets, two from the back and one breast bone; steep them in cold water for an hour, then drain and range in a saucepan; moisten to cover with broth (No. 194a) adding a medium carrot cut in four, a middle-sized onion, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, one clove, and peppercorns; allow the chickens to cook for fifteen minutes, then drain and reserve the broth; refresh and sponge the pieces on a cloth, paring them neatly. Melt three ounces of butter in a saucepan, lay in the pieces of chicken and fry rapidly without browning; a few moments later cover with some clear veloute sauce (No. 415), prepared with the chicken broth and a glassful of white wine; boil up this liquid once, then set the saucepan on one side of the fire to finish cooking the contents; when done, free the sauce of all its fat before straining it through a sieve into a sautoir, adding to it a few spoonfuls of mushroom broth. Reduce while stirring from the bottom of the sautoir until a thick, succulent sauce is obtained, then put in a thickening of six egg-yolks, and an ounce and a half of lobster butter (No. 580). Strain this through a tammy over the pieces of chicken, remaining in the saucepan. Just when serving squeeze in the juice of a lemon. Dress in a thin border of cream forcemeat (No. 75), decorated with truffles; surround this border with a circle of sauted sweet peppers (No. 2769), with mushroom heads on top, and a trussed crawfish between every one. Serve the surplus of sauce in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1865 Chicken Fricassee a la Lucius Chicken No. 1867 Chicken Fricassee with Crustacean Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote for a brigade with a stock pot always going and a numbered reference for every component, so the work here is mostly in the cross-references. Read it as a blanched-then-poached chicken in a velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison.

The hinge: the liaisonOnce the six yolks go into the reduced sauce it must not boil, or the yolks curdle and the sauce breaks into grains. Temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce, return them off the heat, and hold the sauce below about 180F while it thickens.
The numbered referencesNo. 194a is the broth the chickens are first cooked in; No. 415 is velouté, a blond roux let down with that broth; No. 580 is lobster butter, shells and coral pounded with butter and strained; No. 75 is a cream forcemeat, and No. 2769 sautéed sweet peppers. None are optional flavourings — the lobster butter and the crawfish are what make the dish Waleski rather than a plain fricassee.
Chicken size and the seven piecesThree birds at 2½ lb each is about 7½ lb total; two modern 3½ lb chickens come close. The seven-piece cut is two legs, two breast fillets, two pieces off the back and the breastbone — the carcass pieces go in for flavour and body, not for serving.
Steeping and refreshingThe hour in cold water and the fifteen-minute first cooking are there to draw blood and scum so the sauce stays white. "Refresh" means plunge into cold water; "sponge" means pat dry. Skip it and the velouté greys.
"On one side of the fire"A coal range had a hot centre and cool edges. It means a bare simmer — on a modern hob, the lowest setting, around 15 to 20 minutes for the leg pieces, with the breast pulled earlier at 165F.
A glassful of wineThe book does not define the measure; somewhere around half a cup, 4 fl oz, is a fair working reading. Use a dry white with acidity; nothing oaked.
Tammy and sautoirA tammy is a fine worsted cloth used to force sauce through; a fine chinois lined with muslin does the same job. A sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan, chosen here because it evaporates fast during the reduction.
Crawfish and peppersThe trussed crawfish are whole cooked crayfish with the tail bent under, purely decorative. If they are not to be had, the dish still works; the lobster butter in the sauce is the part that carries the flavour.
YieldTwenty-one pieces of chicken, of which perhaps a dozen are worth plating: serve six to eight, with the surplus sauce passed separately as directed.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down that kitchen whole — thousands of numbered entries, each leaning on the others, exactly as a cook trained in the French system would expect. A fricassee is one of the oldest French treatments of poultry: the bird is cut up and cooked in a white sauce rather than browned, and the egg-and-cream liaison at the end is the classic finish. The name Waleski is generally traced to the Walewski family, best remembered through Count Alexandre Colonna-Walewski, Napoleon's son by Maria Walewska and later foreign minister under Napoleon III; like most such garnish names it was attached by a chef rather than registered anywhere, and the attribution is traditional. What marks it as high nineteenth-century service is not the chicken but the surround — a piped border of forcemeat studded with truffle, sautéed peppers, mushroom caps and a ring of crayfish, food built to be carried in on a platter and looked at before it was eaten.