No. 1893

Chickens a la Marengo—Sauted

Poulets Sautes a la Marengo

Take two chickens and prepare them exactly as for the sauted chickens (No. 1906); heat some oil in a sautoir, range in the pieces one beside the other, and set it on a brisk fire tossing them until they are of a fine color, then add a clove of crushed and chopped garlic and some mignonette. Just when prepared to serve drain off three quarters of the fat and replace it by half a pint of white wine, detaching the glaze from the pan, then add a pound of mushroom buttons, and four ounces of thickly sliced truffles, espagnole sauce (No. 414), a little meat-glaze (No. 402), a little fine tomato puree (No. 730) and lemon-juice. Dress the chickens in a pyramid form, cover over with the garnishing and trim the drumsticks and pinions with paper frills (No. 10); decorate the edges of the dish with egg-yolks fried in a small frying pan with a little oil, some half-heart small bread croutons and middling-sized trussed crawfish.

← No. 1892 Chickens a la Marcel—Sauted Chicken No. 1894 Chickens a la Maryland—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stocked larder, so this reads as an assembly note rather than a recipe. Two things need translating before you start: the cross-references and the fact that the sauce is built in the pan in the last two minutes.

The cross-referencesNo. 1906 is Ranhofer's method for sauted chickens, which entails cutting each bird into serving pieces; consult that entry for his exact breakdown. No. 414 espagnole is a brown sauce built on veal stock and roux; a good reduced brown chicken stock thickened lightly stands in. No. 402 meat-glaze is stock reduced to a syrup, and No. 730 is a sieved tomato purée.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than a saucepan and heavier than a skillet. Any wide sauté pan that holds both cut-up birds in a single layer will do; crowding steams the skin instead of colouring it.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white or black pepper, not a dressing and not a cut of meat. Crush peppercorns under a pan bottom rather than grinding fine.
MeasuresHalf a pint of white wine is one cup. Four ounces of truffles is an extravagance even by 1894 standards; a few grams of fresh truffle shaved at the table, or good sautéed cremini with a little truffle-scented oil, carries the intent without the invoice.
TimingChicken pieces sautéed in oil over a brisk fire need roughly 25 to 30 minutes with turning, dark meat first and breast added later so it does not dry. The garlic goes in near the end — added at the start over high heat it burns and turns bitter.
DeglazingPouring off three quarters of the fat before the wine is the hinge. Wine added to a pan swimming in oil will not emulsify or reduce cleanly, and the finished sauce breaks and tastes greasy.
Lemon and glazeBoth come in at the end, and are best stirred in off the boil. Meat-glaze is intensely salty, so add it a spoonful at a time and season only after it is in.
The garnishEgg yolks fried whole in a little oil are separated raw yolks slipped into shallow hot oil until just set — fiddly and best done last. Trussed crawfish means whole boiled crawfish with the tail bent under; paper frills on drumsticks are pure banquet dressing and can be skipped.
YieldTwo small chickens with this quantity of garnish serve six to eight as part of a longer meal, four generously on their own.

A Little History

Chicken Marengo is traditionally traced to the battle of Marengo in June 1800, the story being that Napoleon's cook assembled a dish from whatever the countryside offered — a chicken, oil rather than butter, garlic, tomato, wine, and a few crawfish from a stream, with a fried egg alongside. The tale is almost certainly retrospective legend rather than documented fact, but it explains why the classical garnish is so oddly specific: the egg and the crawfish are there because the story requires them. By the time Charles Ranhofer set it down for Delmonico's, the improvised camp dish had been thoroughly absorbed into the French repertoire, with espagnole sauce, meat-glaze and sliced truffles doing the work that scarcity once did. The version here shows the New York kitchen at its most confident: the rustic origin is preserved in the oil and garlic, and then buried under a pyramid, paper frills and truffles.