No. 1972

Pullet a la Dame Blanche

Poularde a la Dame Blanche

Truss a pullet to be served as an entree (No. 178), rub over the breast with half a lemon, and cover with slices of fat pork. Poeler the pullet in some good stock, as explained in No. 12, adding to it a piece of bacon previously blanched. When the pullet is cooked, strain the stock, free it of fat, and keep the chicken hot in this. Place on the fire to reduce four gills of veloute sauce (No. 415), incorporating a part of the reduced stock slowly into it with a coffeespoonful of prepared red pepper (No. 168); when succulent, strain. Dress the pullet on a thin layer of forcemeat (No. 79) poached on a dish, surround it with small clusters of potatoes cut in balls with a large vegetable scoop, and simply cooked first in salted water, then steamed. Cover the pullet with a part of the sauce, serving the remainder separately. Pullets or capons may be handed round to the guests after being cut up, and they can also be carved on the dining-room sideboard, and served on hot plates with some of the garnishing, and a little of the sauce.

← No. 1971 Pullet a la Arco Valley Capon & Pullet No. 1973 Pullet a la Demidoff →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already knows his numbered base preparations, so the work here is mostly in the cross-references. Read the whole thing as a poêled bird finished with a velouté, garnished with turned potatoes on a forcemeat base.

What a pullet isA young hen, under a year old, usually dressed at 3 to 4 lb. A supermarket roasting chicken of the same weight behaves the same way. A capon, mentioned at the end, is a castrated cockerel of 6 to 9 lb and is now a specialty-butcher order.
Poêler, not roastThis is the hinge. Poêling means cooking the barded bird covered, in a small amount of stock over aromatics, so it steams and bastes in its own vapour rather than browning. Keep the pot lidded and the heat gentle; hard boiling in the stock will make the breast stringy.
Four gillsA gill is half a cup, so four gills of velouté is two cups. That is a generous quantity for one bird and it will reduce noticeably once the poêling stock is worked in.
Prepared red pepperRanhofer's No. 168 is a prepared red-pepper seasoning; in this period 'red pepper' usually means cayenne rather than sweet paprika, but check the cross-reference before you use it. A coffeespoonful is roughly half a teaspoon, and its purpose is to season, not to colour a dish whose whole point is whiteness. Add it at the end and taste.
Fat pork and blanched baconThe barding slices are unsmoked fatback or fresh pork fat. Modern smoked streaky bacon will push the dish toward a flavour Ranhofer did not intend; if it is all you have, blanch it, as he directs for the piece of bacon added to the stock. He gives no reason for the blanching, though it will draw out some salt and smoke.
DonenessCook to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. A 3 to 4 lb bird poêled at a bare simmer will take roughly an hour to an hour and a quarter.
The forcemeat baseA thin layer of forcemeat poached flat on the service dish. It is structural as much as edible, giving the bird a bed and catching the sauce. A plain chicken mousseline, spread about a quarter inch thick and poached gently, does the job.
Potato ballsCut with what is now sold as a large parisienne or melon baller. Boiling in salted water and then steaming dries the surface so the balls hold their shape and do not muddy the sauce.
YieldOne pullet with the garnish serves four as a main course, or six if it is carved at the sideboard as Ranhofer suggests and served with other courses.

A Little History

Dame blanche is one of the nineteenth-century French kitchen's colour names: a dish built to stay white, here a barded pullet rubbed with lemon to keep the skin pale, cooked covered so it never browns, and masked in velouté rather than a brown sauce. The name is generally traced to Boieldieu's 1825 opera La Dame Blanche, which was popular enough across Europe to attach itself to any number of pale preparations, savoury and sweet alike; the ice-cream coupe of the same name survives in Belgium and the Netherlands. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working compendium of that repertoire, which is why this entry reads as a set of instructions to someone who already has velouté, forcemeat and poêling stock standing by. The closing note about carving on the dining-room sideboard belongs to the habits of service à la russe, by then well established in fashionable American dining: the bird could be presented whole, then broken down in the room, a piece of theatre the modern kitchen has largely given up.