No. 1978

Pullet a la Nantua

Poularde a la Nantua

Split down the back of a singed and very clean pullet; bone the breast and legs, leaving on the wing bones; season the inside meats and fill the empty space with quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) combined with crawfish butter (No. 573) and prepared red pepper (No. 168) also the crawfish tails cut lengthwise in two. Sew up the pullet, truss and have the breast well rounded, then cover over with slices of fat pork and lay it in a narrow saucepan, cover three-quarters of its height with skimmed stock (No. 194a), adding aromatic herbs and mushroom peelings; cook it in this alone for one hour; it should really only be poached; then drain off the pullet, untie and dress it on a thin layer of forcemeat poached on a dish; cover lightly with veloute sauce (No. 415) reduced with a part of the stock and finished with red butter (No. 580). Surround with small timbales of fat rice made in timbale molds (No. 6) letting it be quite white; serve the remainder of the sauce in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1977 Pullet a la Mornay Capon & Pullet No. 1979 Pullet a la Perigord →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote for a brigade with a stock pot always going and a numbered reference for every component, so the work here is mostly assembly. The hinge is the poaching: the liquid must never boil, or the forcemeat swells, splits the skin, and the bird turns stringy.

Poach, do not simmerHold the stock at 170-180F, with barely a tremble on the surface, for the full hour. Ranhofer says outright "it should really only be poached." Check the thigh reads 165F before draining; a small boned bird may be done in 45 minutes.
What a pullet isA young hen under a year old, usually 3 to 4 lb dressed. A supermarket roasting chicken of that weight is the direct substitute; skip anything labelled roaster over 5 lb, since the boned breast will not sit plump.
Slices of fat porkThis is barding fat -- sheets of back fat or thinly sliced unsmoked salt pork, tied over the breast so the exposed meat does not dry or discolour in the stock. Fatback from a butcher works; caul fat is a reasonable stand-in.
Crawfish butter and red butterBoth are compound shellfish butters, made by pounding cooked shells with butter, then melting and straining. No. 573, the crawfish butter, is the flavouring butter worked into the forcemeat; No. 580, the "red butter," is a shellfish butter (classically built on lobster coral or shells rather than crayfish) whisked into the finished sauce off the heat for colour and gloss. If it boils after that, it will break.
Prepared red pepperRanhofer's No. 168 appears to be a cayenne preparation rather than a fresh chile. A pinch of cayenne, or a few drops of the same steeped in a little stock, does the same job -- it is there to sharpen the crayfish, not to make the dish hot.
Quenelle forcemeatNo. 89 is a pounded forcemeat of the standard classical type, veal or chicken bound with panada, egg and cream -- a food processor handles it in a minute. Keep everything cold, and poach a teaspoon of it in stock to taste for salt before you stuff the bird.
Fat rice timbalesRice cooked in stock with butter until soft and starchy, pressed into small dariole moulds and turned out. Ranhofer insists it stay "quite white," so use pale stock and no browned butter.
Sourcing crayfishWhole cooked crayfish are sold frozen; you need the tails for the stuffing and the shells for both butters, so buy them whole rather than as picked tail meat. Langoustine or shrimp shells give a workable butter if crayfish are out of reach.
YieldServes four to six as a main course, with the sauce boat passed separately.

A Little History

Anything called à la Nantua takes its name from the town of Nantua in the Bugey, east of Lyon, whose lake was long famous for freshwater crayfish; by the nineteenth century the name had hardened into a code word in professional French kitchens for crayfish butter, crayfish tails and a pale sauce tinted pink with them. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full working record of that repertoire, which is why this entry reads as a string of cross-references rather than a recipe -- the forcemeat, the velouté and the two shellfish butters each have their own number elsewhere in the book. The dish also shows how the classical kitchen treated a young hen: boned, stuffed, barded and gently poached rather than roasted, so the meat stayed white and the sauce could carry the flavour.