No. 1902

Chickens Point du Jour—Sauted

Poulets Sautes au Point du Jour

Take two chickens and prepare them exactly as for bourguignonne (No. 1884), range them in a sautoir with melted butter. Fry colorless in butter, four ounces of chopped onions, dredge over with a tablespoonful of flour and make a small light roux; moisten this with red wine and stock (No. 194a) add a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf and a few mushroom parings, despumate and reduce well the sauce. Saute the chickens in the butter and when well browned add two dozen small glazed onions, as many cooked mushroom heads and as many olives as mushrooms; strain the above sauce, pour it over the chickens and at the first boil, take out the chickens and dress. Reduce the sauce, add to it a handful of small nonpareil capers and pour it over the chickens, garnish around with tiny round crusts an inch and a half in diameter, toasted and covered on one side with anchovy butter (No. 569).

← No. 1901 Chickens a la Tunisian—Sauted Chicken No. 1903 Chickens, Hunter's Style—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already knows the house methods, so the recipe leans on cross-references and assumes you can judge quantities by eye. The following fills in what a modern cook has to supply.

Prepared "as for bourguignonne"Prepared "as for bourguignonne" points back to No. 1884; for a sauté this means the birds are jointed raw into serving pieces rather than roasted whole. Two chickens of about 3 lb each would give roughly eight to ten pieces — a serving estimate, not Ranhofer's figure.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold every piece in one layer without crowding. A 12-inch skillet will take one chicken; use two pans or work in batches rather than stacking the pieces.
DespumateSimply to skim. Hold the sauce at a bare simmer with the pan pulled half off the heat so the fat and scum collect on the cool side, and lift them off repeatedly as it reduces. This is what makes the difference between a clean sauce and a greasy one.
Stock No. 194aOne of Ranhofer's basic stocks, cross-referenced throughout the book. A good unsalted brown veal or chicken stock stands in; reduce it yourself rather than using anything already salted, since the sauce is reduced twice and finished with capers, olives and anchovy butter.
Wine and stock quantitiesThe original gives none. For four ounces of onions and a tablespoon of flour, roughly a cup of red wine and two cups of stock produce a sauce of the right body after reduction — but this is an inference, not Ranhofer's figure.
The hinge: the chickens leave the sauceThe pieces are only brought to the first boil in the strained sauce, then lifted out and dressed while the sauce reduces alone. Leaving the chicken in the pan through the final reduction is what turns the breast dry and stringy. Cook the dark meat a few minutes longer than the white in the initial sauté.
Olives and capersUse small green olives, pitted, and blanch them a minute in boiling water to pull back the brine; the same for the capers if they are salt-packed. Nonpareil are the smallest grade and are still sold under that name.
Anchovy butter and croutonsAnchovy butter (No. 569) is anchovy fillets pounded with soft butter and sieved. Spread it on the toasted rounds off the heat, at the moment of serving — it should stay soft, not melt into the crust.
Fry the onions colorlessThe chopped onions for the sauce base go pale gold at most, and the roux is described as "small light." This is not a browned stew; the color comes from the red wine and the brown stock.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertory written down — roughly 3,500 numbered recipes, cross-referenced like a manual rather than a book for home cooks. The chicken chapter alone runs to dozens of sautés distinguished by garnish, and "Point du Jour" is one of them; Ranhofer offers no explanation of the name, though it is often taken as one of his Parisian tags. The dish itself belongs to a recognisable family — jointed chicken browned in butter, a red wine and brown stock sauce, and the classic garniture of glazed onions, mushroom heads and olives — that a French-trained chef of the 1880s could assemble from memory. The finish is capers, and toasted rounds spread with anchovy butter, a salty counterweight that would have been served on the same restaurant menus as terrapin and canvasback duck.