No. 1982

Pullet a la Villars

Poularde a la Villars

Truss a pullet as for an entree (No. 178) with the legs inside; rub over the breasts with half a lemon, cover with bards of fat pork, tie well and poeler it in some good stock (No 12) keeping it very white. Just when prepared to serve, drain out the pullet, untie and dress it on a trimmed rice croustade foundation fastened on a dish, and surround it with a white garnishing composed of lamb's sweetbreads, cocks'-kidneys and mushroom heads, dressed in clusters and these alternated with fine slices of red beef tongue cut in points to resemble cocks'-combs. Cover the pullet and garnishings with a little Villars sauce (No. 559) and serve more of it separately.

← No. 1981 Pullet a la Seymour Capon & Pullet No. 1983 Pullet a la Zingara →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so this reads as a fragment; nearly all of it is technique that survives, under other names. The hinge is the poêlé: the bird steams in butter and a little stock under cover and must never brown.

What a pullet isA young hen, generally under a year and not yet in full lay — smaller and more tender than a stewing fowl. A 3 to 4 lb roasting chicken stands in exactly; do not use a large roaster, which will need too long a cooking and lose the pale, moist flesh the dish is built on.
Poêler, not poachTo poêler is to cook covered in a heavy pot over a bed of aromatics with butter and only enough stock to keep things moist — a butter-steam, not a braise in liquid. Keep the heat low, the lid on, and the pot off any colouring flame. Roughly 20 minutes per pound; the thigh should read 165F/74C.
"Keeping it very white"The whole point of the dish. Rubbing the breast with lemon and covering it with fat pork prevents any tan; if the bird colours, the white garnish and pale sauce look wrong against it. Use a light stock, not a browned one.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of cured back fat or fresh fatback, tied over the breast. Sliced salt pork blanched briefly to draw the salt works; so does caul fat. Ordinary streaky bacon is a poor substitute — it is smoked and will both colour and flavour the bird.
Cocks'-kidneysCock testicles, a standard item in nineteenth-century markets and still occasionally met with in traditional French cooking, but not something a supermarket carries. Poached button mushrooms, small quenelles or extra sweetbread pieces fill the same role in the cluster garnish.
Lamb's sweetbreadsSoak several hours in cold water with changes, blanch, refresh, then press between plates before trimming. Poach them white in a little stock — a browned sweetbread breaks the colour scheme.
The rice croustadeA moulded base of very stiff rice cooked down until it can be shaped, chilled, trimmed and often dried or lightly set in the oven, then fixed to the platter; the recipe says only that it is 'fastened on a dish' and does not say how. It is a pedestal, not a course; nobody was expected to eat much of it.
Villars sauceRecipe No. 559 in the same book, and not reproduced here, so its composition cannot be read off this page; on the evidence of the dish it must be a pale sauce of the velouté/allemande family. Any well-made chicken velouté mounted with butter and sharpened with a little lemon will carry the dish.
YieldA 3 to 4 lb bird with this quantity of garnish serves four as a main course, six as one of several courses in the manner the book assumes.

A Little History

Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean (1894) from his decades at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house method exactly: a French classical garnish, a name borrowed from a title of the old nobility — the Villars marshals and dukes — and a construction meant to be carried whole to the table. Naming dishes à la some grandee was standard practice in the grande cuisine Ranhofer had trained in, and the name usually signals the garnish rather than any connection to the person. What dates the recipe is not the chicken but the trimmings: cocks'-combs and cocks'-kidneys were staple luxury garnishes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are said to have faded from restaurant kitchens at some point after this book, so that Ranhofer's own trick of cutting beef tongue into points to resemble combs now outlives the thing it imitated.