No. 1910

Chickens a la Leonia—Boiled

Poulets Bouillis a la Leonia

Have very tender two-pound chickens, prepare and truss them as for an entree and range them in a saucepan with stock (No. 194a) to cook slowly; when done cut each chicken into five pieces; two legs, two wings, and one of the breast bones. Fry lightly in butter one shallot or half a medium onion, add four ounces of dried mushrooms, softened in water and chopped up finely, also a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, moisten with two gills of white wine and a pint of veloute sauce (No. 415); skim the top properly for fifteen to twenty minutes, then take out the parsley and pour in a pint of tomato sauce (No. 549) and a quarter of a pound of lean ham cut in three-sixteenths inch squares, let the sauce reduce until quite thick, add the pieces of chicken and when thoroughly warm, dress with the sauce, bestrewing the surface with chopped parsley.

← No. 1909 Chicken a l'Aquitaine—Braised Chicken No. 1911 Chickens a la Stuyvesant—Poele →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots and mother sauces already standing, so most of the work here is assembling the components before the chicken goes near the pan. The sauce is the dish; the poached chicken is only the vehicle.

The hinge: poach, do not boil"Boiled" here is best read as a gentle poach in stock at a bare tremble; the recipe says only to cook slowly and gives no time or temperature. Figure roughly 25-35 minutes for birds this size, until the thigh joint loosens. A rolling boil shreds the breast and clouds the cooking liquid.
Two-pound chickensThese are very young birds, closer to today's Cornish game hen or spring chicken than to a supermarket roaster. Two of them will serve about four; a single 4 lb chicken can be substituted but will need longer poaching and gives clumsier portions than the five-piece cut Ranhofer specifies.
Gills and quantitiesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of white wine is one cup. The pint of velouté and pint of tomato sauce are US pints, two cups each, and the finished sauce is meant to reduce well below that combined volume.
Stock No. 194a and velouté No. 415The cross-referenced stock is a white stock of the kind the kitchen kept standing; a good unsalted chicken stock stands in. Velouté is that same white stock thickened with a pale butter-flour roux and simmered until it coats — not béchamel, and not a milk sauce.
Four ounces of dried mushroomsThat is dry weight, and it is a large amount by modern habit; 4 oz of dried mushrooms rehydrates to something like a pound. Soak in warm water and chop fine; the recipe does not call for the soaking liquid, but it is worth straining and saving.
Skimming for fifteen to twenty minutesThis is the period-standard depouillage: the sauce simmers uncovered while butterfat and roux scum are lifted off the surface repeatedly. It is what makes a nineteenth-century sauce taste clean rather than pasty, and it cannot be rushed.
The ham"Lean ham" is cooked ham, cut in neat 3/16-inch dice as specified. Heavily smoked or honey-glazed supermarket ham will dominate the mushrooms and wine; prosciutto cotto or a plain boiled ham is closer.
FinishingThe chicken goes into the reduced sauce only to warm through, two or three minutes. Season at the end — the ham, the reduced stock and the mushroom liquor all carry salt, and salting early in a reduction of this length overshoots.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its chicken chapter runs to dozens of near-identical poached and braised birds distinguished only by their garnish and their dedication. The names are a guide to the restaurant's clientele and geography rather than to any culinary tradition: the neighboring entries here honor Aquitaine and Stuyvesant, and "a la Leonia" is most plausibly a nod to a patron or to Leonia, New Jersey, then a fashionable commuter settlement across the Hudson — though Ranhofer, as usual, explains nothing. What the recipe does document precisely is the house method: everything rests on numbered cross-references to a velouté and a tomato sauce made elsewhere in the kitchen, so that a garnish of mushrooms, ham, wine and herbs could be composed to order in minutes.