No. 1898

Chickens a la Portugaise—Sauted

Poulets Sautes a la Portugaise

Have three chickens prepared the same as for hunter's style (No. 1903), saute them in half oil and half butter, season with salt and pepper, and when they are three-quarters done add three pounds of peeled tomatoes, halved through the center and the seeds and juice pressed out, a little finely cut up chives and three tablespoonfuls of melted glaze (No. 402); boil and simmer until thoroughly cooked. Prepare eighteen small very sound halved tomatoes; press lightly to extract the juice and fill them with a dressing prepared as follows: Put four ounces of bread-crumbs into a bowl with a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a crushed and chopped clove of garlic, the chopped livers of three chickens, salt, pepper and nutmeg; mix the whole well together and fill each half tomato with some of this; besprinkle with bread-crumbs and grated parmesan, and lay a small piece of butter on top of every one, set them in a hot oven and when nicely browned take out and dress in a circle on a dish with the chickens in the center, dredge over with chopped parsley and decorate the leg and wing bones with paper frills (No. 10).

← No. 1897 Chickens a la Parmentier—Sauted Chicken No. 1899 Chickens a la Sanford—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

A sauté of jointed chicken finished with tomato, ringed by tomato halves stuffed with a liver-and-crumb forcemeat. Two cross-references in the original carry most of the work, and both are easy to supply.

"Prepared the same as for hunter's style""Prepared the same as for hunter's style" points to No. 1903, where the birds are cut up for sautéing rather than roasted whole. Ranhofer's chickens were generally smaller than modern supermarket birds, so three of his are likely closer to two large chickens today.
Glaze (No. 402)Ranhofer's glaze is veal or poultry stock reduced until it sheets and sets firm when cold. Three tablespoonfuls of it melted is the seasoning backbone of the pan sauce; a good demi-glace or a heavily reduced homemade stock stands in. Commercial bouillon paste is much saltier, so cut back the salt if you use it.
The hinge: drain the tomatoes hardBoth the sauce tomatoes and the shells must be pressed free of seeds and juice. Skip it and the sauté turns into a watery braise and the stuffed halves collapse in the oven. Salting the drained shells briefly and inverting them draws off more liquid still.
Three pounds of peeled tomatoesPeel by scoring and blanching thirty seconds. Out of season, drained canned whole tomatoes are closer to the intent than pale fresh ones, since they go in only to melt down into the sauce.
"A hot oven"The book gives no temperatures; something in the 425–450F range suits the intent. The stuffed tomatoes want quick browning, not long cooking; ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough.
Chicken livers in the stuffingChop them fine so they cook through in the short time the tomatoes are in the oven — the filling should reach 165F. Trim the green-tinged bile spots first, and note that three livers is a small amount for four ounces of crumbs; the mixture should be moist and bound, so add a spoonful of stock or melted butter if it stays dusty.
Half oil, half butterThe oil raises the smoke point so the butter can brown the skin without burning. Use a wide pan and work in batches; crowded chicken steams.
Yield and servingThree chickens and eighteen tomato halves would serve roughly eight, depending on portioning. The paper frills of No. 10 are decorative and can be left off without loss.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in numbered order — hence the cross-references that assume you own the whole book. "À la portugaise" in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage is shorthand for tomato, and often for stuffed tomatoes specifically, a convention often said to reflect how firmly the fruit was identified with the Iberian and Mediterranean south rather than any particular Portuguese dish, though that explanation is supposition rather than established fact. The recipe also shows the period's thrift inside its grandeur: the livers of the three birds being jointed become the forcemeat for the garnish, so nothing from the chickens leaves the kitchen unused. Sautés like this one, jointed birds finished in their own pan with a glaze-fortified sauce, filled dozens of entries in the chicken chapter.