No. 1896

Chickens a la Nantaise—Sauted

Poulets Sautes a la Nantaise

Prepare three chickens the same as for hunter's style (No. 1903,) saute them in butter without browning and remove each piece as fast as cooked; drain off the grease, detach the glaze with a little mushroom broth and Madeira wine, add some bechamel and cream (No. 411) and let simmer slowly, pouring in a little more cream if necessary; strain the sauce and keep it boiling hot. Make a croquette preparation with artichoke bottoms and cooked lean ham, the former cut in three-sixteenth inch squares and the latter in one-eighth pieces; mingle with some thick cold bechamel (No. 409) and form it into pear-shaped croquettes, dip in eggs and bread-crumbs and fry to a fine color in clean, white, and very hot frying fat. Fry some shrimps in butter, season with salt, pepper, fine herbs and lemon juice. Dress the chickens, pass the sauce through a tammy and pour part of it over the chickens; dress the shrimps in clusters and artichoke bottom croquettes between each; serve the rest of the sauce separately.

← No. 1895 Chickens a la Montesquieu—Sauted Chicken No. 1897 Chickens a la Parmentier—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already simmering, so this reads as a sequence of cross-references. Reduced to its parts it is a white sauté of chicken with a Madeira cream sauce, shrimp, and ham-and-artichoke croquettes.

The hinge: saute without browningThe whole character of the dish depends on keeping the butter and the chicken pale — medium-low heat, no colour on the skin or the pan. If the butter browns, the finished cream sauce turns beige and tastes of fond rather than of Madeira and mushroom.
What the cross-references mean"Prepare as for hunter's style" sends you to No. 1903 for the butchery: the birds are cut into serving joints before sauteing. No. 409 is the bechamel, which the recipe itself specifies should be thick and cold for the croquettes - stiff enough to shape; No. 411 is the cream-finished sauce Ranhofer wants stirred into the deglazed pan.
Remove each piece as it is doneWings and breast finish well before the thighs. Pull each piece as it is cooked through (by modern guidance, 165F in the thickest part, not touching bone) and hold it warm; leaving everything in until the legs are done gives you dry breast.
Detach the glazeThis is deglazing. Pour off the butter, then loosen the pale film in the pan with mushroom broth (the strained liquid from cooking mushrooms, or a strong mushroom infusion) and Madeira before the cream goes in.
TammyA tammy was a stretched worsted or fine woollen cloth through which sauce was wrung by two people. A fine chinois lined with a doubled square of muslin does the same work.
Artichoke bottomsFresh ones mean trimming globe artichokes down to the base and cooking them in acidulated water. Tinned or frozen artichoke bottoms are a fair substitute; drain and dry them thoroughly or the croquette mixture will be too wet to shape.
Frying fat"Clean, white, and very hot" means fresh, unused fat, hot enough to colour the crumb quickly; in modern terms roughly 360-375F. Chill the shaped croquettes firm before breading, and fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
The shrimpTwo to three minutes in butter, until just opaque. "Fine herbs" here is fines herbes — chervil, tarragon, chives, parsley — added at the end, off the heat, with the lemon.
YieldThe recipe gives no number of covers; three chickens garnished this heavily would stretch to a large table. For a household table, cut it to one bird - a third of the recipe - and make six croquettes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long run of sauteed chicken variations Montesquieu on one side, Parmentier on the other each defined not by a different cooking method but by a different garnish. That is how the classical repertoire worked: the name is the garnish. A la nantaise points to Nantes, at the mouth of the Loire. The Madeira, the mushroom broth, the bechamel finished with cream, the croquettes shaped into pears and breaded to order all of it assumes a kitchen where the component sauces already exist, which is precisely why Ranhofer numbered his recipes and pointed the reader backward rather than repeating himself.