No. 1883

Chickens, Tomato Conde Sauce—Stuffed

Poulets Farcis a la Sauce Tomate Conde

Roast some chickens, when cooked and cold, remove the breast meat, carefully leaving the other part of the chicken intact, cut these breasts into dice, also half as much mushrooms as there is chicken and half as many truffles as mushrooms, all cut in three-sixteenths of an inch squares. Put this salpicon into a bechamel sauce (No. 409), well reduced with the mushroom broth, then use it to replace the breasts in the chickens, rounding it well on the top; cover the whole with bechamel sauce (No. 409), besprinkle with bread-crumbs and a little grated parmesan cheese, pour on some clarified butter and set the chickens in a slack oven to brown slightly. Dress them on a garnishing of noodles sauted in butter (No. 2972), and well browned, and serve at the same time a sauce-boat of clear tomato conde sauce (No. 550).

← No. 1882 Chickens with Oyster Sauce Chicken No. 1884 Chickens a la Bourguignonne—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a reconstruction: the roast birds are hollowed of their breast meat, the meat returned as a creamed salpicon, and the whole gratinated. Everything hinges on the béchamel being reduced stiff enough to hold the mounded shape.

Slack ovenA slack oven is a low or cooling oven, usually reckoned somewhere around 250-300F. It is there only to heat the filling through and colour the crumbs, not to cook anything; the chicken is already roasted. Timing depends on the size of the birds; finish under a broiler for a few seconds if the top is still pale.
The sauce must be tight"Well reduced with the mushroom broth" is the instruction that decides whether this works. Simmer the béchamel down until a spoon drawn through it leaves a clean track, then fold in the salpicon. A loose sauce will slump out of the cavity in the oven and the whole construction collapses.
Salpicon proportionsBy volume: 4 parts diced breast, 2 parts mushrooms, 1 part truffle, all cut to 3/16 inch — a scant quarter-inch dice. Uniform cutting is the point of a salpicon; ragged pieces read as leftovers.
TrufflesFresh black truffle at these quantities is a considerable expense. Preserved truffle peelings, or simply an extra measure of well-browned mushroom with a little truffle oil stirred into the béchamel, keeps the dish in proportion without pretending to be something it is not.
Mushroom brothThe recipe assumes you have the liquor from cooking the mushrooms. Sauté them in butter with a splash of water or white wine, drain, and use that liquid to thin the béchamel before reducing it.
Cross-referencesNo. 409 is Ranhofer's béchamel; No. 550 the clear tomato Condé sauce, a strained tomato sauce served thin in a boat; No. 2972 the buttered noodles, boiled then tossed in butter until browned at the edges. Any competent version of each will serve.
Food safetyCooked chicken that has been cooled and held should be reheated until the filling is steaming through — a slack oven for a short time may not manage it in a large bird. Assemble cold, then check the centre of the mound reaches 165F.
YieldThe recipe specifies only "some chickens" and gives no quantities. As a guide, two small roasting chickens of 2 1/2 to 3 lb each, prepared this way, would serve roughly six to eight as a course, with the noodles carrying the plate.

A Little History

This is a made dish of the Delmonico's kitchen, printed in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), and it shows the restaurant logic of the period: a roast fowl reappears as something more elaborate than it began, with the carcass itself used as the serving vessel. The technique of lifting the breasts, dicing them into a bound salpicon and returning them to the bird belongs to a family of nineteenth-century French preparations sometimes catalogued as volaille farcie or, in later kitchens, chicken en surprise. "Cond u00e9" as a sauce name is generally traced to the household of the Princes de Cond u00e9, whose kitchens gave their name to a scattering of classical preparations — most familiarly the rice-and-fruit dessert — though the connection is culinary tradition rather than documented fact. The gratin of crumbs, parmesan and clarified butter does the work of making a cold roasted bird look like a new dish.