No. 1880

Chickens a l'Hoteliere—Roasted

Poulets Rotis a l'Hoteliere

Peel twenty medium fresh mushroom heads, empty out the insides and stuff them as explained in No. 650. Roast two tender chickens on the spit before a good fire, basting them over with butter. Chop up the mushroom ends and put them in a saucepan with thyme and bay leaf, minced shallots, two gills of white wine and two gills of gravy (No. 404); cover the pan and cook over a slow fire for ten minutes, then strain the liquid through a sieve and reduce it to the consistency of a half-glaze, adding four tablespoonfuls of melted glaze (No. 402) and two of Madeira wine; boil up the sauce for two minutes and remove it on one side to finish with butter. Salt and untruss the chickens, cut each one into five pieces and dress them pyramidically on a dish; surround with the stuffed mushrooms and pour the sauce over the chickens.

← No. 1879 Chickens a la Championne—Roasted Chicken No. 1881 Chicken in the Saucepan—Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a spit, a stockpot and a numbered reference system, so the work here is mostly translation: two cross-referenced components and one temperature.

GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of white wine and two gills of gravy are one cup each. The finished sauce reduces to roughly half a cup for two birds.
Instead of the spitRoast at 425F on a rack, breast up, about 45-55 minutes for two 2 1/2 lb chickens, basting with butter every fifteen minutes. The spit's virtue was constant self-basting and a dry radiant heat; a hot oven and frequent basting get close.
The two cross-referencesNo. 404 is Ranhofer's gravy and No. 402 his glaze, that is, brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold. A good reduced brown stock or a spoonful of commercial demi-glace covers both; the four tablespoons of melted glaze are there for body and gloss, not flavour alone.
The stuffed mushroom headsNo. 650 is the stuffing the recipe points to; a firm duxelles bound with a little of the chopped stems and breadcrumb does much the same job. Bake the filled caps separately at 375F for 15-20 minutes so they hold their shape for the garnish.
Half-glaze consistencyReduce the strained wine and gravy until it coats a spoon and just barely runs. Overshoot and the added glaze will make it sticky.
Finishing with butterThis is the hinge. Take the pan off the heat before whisking in the cold butter; if the sauce boils after the butter goes in it splits and turns greasy, and reheating will not bring it back.
Cut into five piecesProbably two legs, two wings taken with a piece of breast, and the breast crown or carcass piece. Dressing them "pyramidically" suggests the heavier pieces below and the breast on top, with the mushrooms banked around the base.
YieldTwo small chickens with twenty stuffed mushrooms serves six as a main course, four generously.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the book's habit of building dishes out of numbered parts rather than repeating itself. A l'hôtelière means, literally, in the manner of the innkeeper's wife or the hotel kitchen, and in nineteenth-century French practice it generally signals a garnish built on mushrooms and a duxelles-type preparation, with the pan liquid finished in butter and a shallot and white wine base. Ranhofer keeps that framework but scales it up to hotel dining-room presentation: mushrooms hollowed and stuffed twenty at a time to ring the platter. Note also the survival of spit roasting before an open fire in a professional kitchen of the 1890s, even where ranges had closed ovens.