No. 1974
Pullet a la Leondise
Poularde a la Leondise
Ranhofer wrote for a brigade kitchen, so this entry is a two-line assembly note that assumes three other recipes are already in hand. Read it as a plating scheme rather than a set of instructions.
- It is a cross-reference, not a standalone recipeNothing here tells you how to cook the bird, the garnish or the sauce. The roasting is deferred to No. 1996 and the sauce to No. 464 (financiere); the quenelles are not cross-referenced at all, so you supply those yourself. Without substitutes for all three you have only a description.
- What a pullet isA young hen under a year old, generally 3 to 4 lb dressed and noticeably more tender than a stewing fowl. A supermarket roasting chicken of the same weight is the direct equivalent; the older, tougher hens sold as "soup chicken" are not.
- Roasting the birdThe method is not given here; it is deferred to No. 1996, and nineteenth-century roasting could be done on a spit or in the oven. In a modern oven, 425F for the first 15 minutes and 350F thereafter gives comparable browning; the thigh should reach 165F. Rest it 15 minutes before it goes on the macaroni or the juices flood the plate.
- Financiere sauceA Madeira-fortified brown sauce finished with truffle essence and, in the full version, garnished with truffles, cockscombs and olives. If you are approximating it, a good demi-glace reduced with dry Madeira gets you the flavour; the cockscombs are not worth chasing.
- QuenellesPoached dumplings of pounded forcemeat, usually chicken or veal bound with panade and cream, shaped small with spoons or a bag and poached barely below a simmer. Boiling water breaks them apart, which is the single thing to watch.
- Crawfish or shrimp tailsThese go in cooked and peeled. They are being warmed through in the macaroni, not cooked in it -- a minute or two of residual heat is enough before they tighten and go dry.
- The macaroni layerBoiled macaroni, drained and dressed with a little of the sauce or butter, spread as a bed on the platter. This is not a baked casserole; it should stay loose enough to spoon.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb pullet with this much garnish serves four generously. Serve the financiere separately in a sauce boat as written, so the pasta does not turn to paste.
The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its poultry chapter runs to dozens of near-identical roast pullets distinguished only by garnish and sauce. That was the point: a la Demidoff, a la Lester Wallack and a la Leondise sit one after another because the house needed a long menu built from a short list of preparations. Many of the names honour patrons, performers and public figures of the period -- Lester Wallack was a New York actor-manager -- and others are geographic or simply invented for the carte, with no surviving explanation. Financiere, the sauce called for here, belongs to the same nineteenth-century French repertoire and is conventionally read as "in the financier's style", an allusion often traced to its expense: Madeira, truffle essence and truffle garnish in a single sauce boat. The combination of pasta, shellfish tails and quenelles under a roast bird shows the Delmonico's manner clearly enough, which was to make one plate carry three or four separate kitchen operations.