No. 1907

Chickens with Fine Herbs, Tomato Garnishing—Sauted

Poulets Sautes aux Fines Herbes, Garnis de Tomates

Fry chopped parsley and mushrooms and four blanched chopped shallots in butter: add two young two-pound chickens, both cut up into five pieces and a garnished bunch of parsley (No. 123); season with salt and pepper; let all cook without adhering to the pan, skim off the fat and add a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), some clear gravy (No. 404) and the juice of a lemon. Put some butter and oil in a pan and when hot range one beside the other, some halved tomatoes having the seeds pressed out; season with salt and pepper, add a whole clove of garlic; fry these over a hot fire keeping them whole, and when their moisture has evaporated suppress the garlic and besprinkle with a little prepared red pepper (No. 168). Dress the chickens in a pyramid form, surround with the tomatoes and pour over the chicken gravy just as it is; dredge the surface with chopped parsley and serve with a separate half-glaze sauce (No. 413) mixed with tomato sauce (No. 549).

← No. 1906 Sauted Chickens with half—Glaze Chicken No. 1908 Spring Chickens As an Entree, Roasted—Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote for a brigade with a stock pot always going, and half of this recipe lives in cross-references to other numbers in The Epicurean. The dish itself is a straightforward sauté once you decide what to pour into it.

The hinge: keep the pan dry until the sauce goes in"Let all cook without adhering to the pan" means sauté the chicken in butter over moderate heat, moving it, until it is coloured and nearly cooked through — not stewed. Only then do you skim the fat and add the liquid, which finishes the pieces and becomes the sauce.
Espagnole and clear gravyNo. 414 is a long-simmered brown sauce built on brown roux and veal stock; No. 404 is a clear, unthickened brown stock. A pint of good reduced brown stock or demi-glace loosened with a little more stock will stand in for both. Do not use a floury packet gravy here, as the sauce is finished with nothing but lemon.
Half-glaze with tomato, served apartThe separate sauce (No. 413 with No. 549) is demi-glace mixed with tomato sauce; Ranhofer gives no proportion, so judge it to taste. If you are already using demi-glace in the pan, make the table sauce from the same base and simply add tomato.
"Garnished bunch of parsley"No. 123 is Ranhofer's bouquet garni: parsley tied up with thyme and bay leaf, and often a little green of leek. Tie it with string and lift it out before saucing.
Prepared red pepperNo. 168 is a house preparation of red pepper; the quantity here, "a little," is genuinely unspecified. A light dusting of cayenne, or sweet paprika with a pinch of cayenne, gives the intended effect on the tomatoes.
Cutting into fiveMost likely two legs, two wings taken with a portion of breast, and the carcass split off; the recipe says only "cut up into five pieces." Modern eight-piece butchery works equally well; add the breast pieces to the pan a few minutes after the legs so they do not dry out. Cook to 165F at the thigh.
Two-pound chickensBirds that small are now sold as spring chickens or small broilers (a poussin is smaller still, around a pound). One 3 1/2-4 lb chicken cut up substitutes reasonably and will need a few more minutes in the pan.
The tomatoesHalve, squeeze out the seeds and fry cut side down in butter and oil over high heat until the moisture has gone and the cut faces caramelise. They must hold their shape, so leave them undisturbed and use firm, not overripe, fruit. Fish out the garlic clove before it burns.
YieldTwo small chickens, five pieces each, serve four to six as a main course with the tomatoes ringed around the mound of chicken.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the book is organised less as a set of recipes than as a numbered working system: sauces, garnishes, bouquets and stocks each have a number that later dishes call on, exactly as a kitchen brigade would call for them by name. Here aux fines herbes means the chopped parsley, shallot and mushroom cooked in butter at the start — a sauté base closer to a duxelles than to the classical fines herbes of parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, or to a modern packet of dried mixed herbs. Tomatoes appear throughout Ranhofer both as sauce and, as here, fried in halves for colour on the platter. Building the chicken up "in a pyramid form" and ringing it with garnish belongs to the elaborate platter presentation of the great restaurants of the era, where a dish was expected to be architecture before it was dinner.