No. 1983

Pullet a la Zingara

Poularde a la Zingara

Draw two pullets, single and truss with the legs inside, then tie, stiffen the breast meats and lard them with lardons of tongue and fat pork (No. 3, Fig. 52). Line the bottom of a saucepan with bards of the same pork and slices of veal, round slices of carrots and onions, one whole onion containing a clove and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; lay the pullets on top, cover over with strong buttered paper and moisten with one quart of stock (No. 194a); boil, skim and cook slowly for an hour to an hour and a half, and thirty minutes before serving allow it to brown to a nice color. Pound four ounces of unsmoked red beef tongue with the same amount of butter, season with pepper and grated nutmeg and dissolve this in a quarter of a pint of meat glaze (No. 402), heat it up and add a little espagnole (No. 414); rub the whole through a tammy and lay this puree on the bottom of a dish with the pullets on top.

← No. 1982 Pullet a la Villars Capon & Pullet No. 1984 Pullet, Ancient Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a braise dressed with a tongue butter, written for a brigade that had stock, glaze and espagnole already on the stove. Two substitutions and one temperature check are all it really needs.

What a pullet isA young hen, roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb dressed and more tender than a stewing fowl. Two supermarket 3 lb chickens are the right stand-in; the recipe serves six to eight.
Bards and lardonsBards are thin sheets of fatback laid in the pan to keep the birds off the metal; lardons here are matchsticks of tongue and fat pork threaded through the breast with a larding needle. Sheets of thinly sliced fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon do the lining, and if you skip the larding, slip the tongue and pork under the skin instead.
Unsmoked red beef tongueCured (not smoked) tongue, red from the curing salt. Buy tongue from a deli counter rather than trying to cure it; it is often sold already cooked, but pickled tongue is also sold raw and must be simmered until fully cooked before it is pounded cold with the butter.
The buttered paperA cartouche of parchment pressed over the birds, buttered so it does not stick. It keeps the exposed breast from drying while the lower half braises. Foil traps too much steam and dulls the later browning.
Heat and timingBring the quart of stock to a boil on the stove, skim, then hold it at a bare simmer, or move it to a 325F oven. Ranhofer's hour to an hour and a half is about right for 3 lb birds, but go by an instant-read thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh.
Browning at the endThe recipe browns the birds during the final thirty minutes of cooking. In a modern oven, uncover, remove the paper, raise the heat to 425F and give it 10 to 15 minutes, basting once or twice. Longer than that and the breast overcooks past the point the braise gained you anything.
Meat glaze and espagnoleNo. 402 is glace de viande, brown stock reduced to a syrup, and No. 414 is espagnole, the flour-thickened brown mother sauce. A quarter pint is half a cup. Reduced demi-glace from a good butcher covers both; use it sparingly, as the tongue butter is already rich and salty.
Rub through a tammyA tammy is a fine worsted cloth the sauce was forced through with two people twisting the ends. A blender followed by a fine-mesh sieve gives the same smooth puree in a fraction of the time.
ServingThe tongue puree goes on the platter first, warm but not boiling, with the whole birds set on it and carved at the table. It will break if held over direct heat; keep it in a bowl over hot water.

A Little History

A la zingara means "gypsy style" — zingara is Italian for a Romani woman — and in nineteenth-century French kitchens the name attached to a fixed set of garnish elements rather than to any Romani cooking: julienned or pounded cured tongue, often with ham, mushroom and truffle, in a brown sauce sharpened with madeira or tomato. The label was decorative, one of dozens of vaguely picturesque national and regional tags that let a long menu look varied. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, uses it here in its stripped-back form: tongue, butter, glaze and espagnole worked into a smooth crimson bed for the birds. The cross-references to numbered stocks and sauces are the tell that this was written for a professional kitchen, where a cook could send someone to the stock pot rather than begin a garnish from scratch.