No. 1985
Pullet, English Style
Poularde a l'Anglaise
This is a cross-referenced entry: the bird is cooked exactly as in No. 1984, and only the garnish and sauce change. What follows is what a modern cook needs to fill in the gaps Ranhofer assumed his readers already knew.
- What "à l'anglaise" signals hereWhat "a l'anglaise" signals here -- the treatment is plain: the vegetables go into salted water and the sauce is passed separately rather than poured over, as the recipe directs. Ranhofer says only to dress the bird as in No. 1984, so the exact arrangement of the garnish is not specified.
- A pulletA young hen, under a year old and not yet in full lay. Ranhofer's poularde is a fattened bird, so anything from about 3 lb upwards will do; the flesh should be pale and fine-grained, since the dish depends on a white bird and a white sauce.
- The bird is poached, not roastedThe bird is not roasted -- the method is carried over wholesale from No. 1984, which is not reproduced here; a poularde in the older style would normally be poached rather than roasted. If poaching, keep the liquid at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or the breast toughens and the skin splits.
- DonenessRoughly 50 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer for a 3 to 4 lb bird, but go by temperature: 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Let it rest in the warm cooking liquid rather than in open air so it does not dry.
- Cream bechamel, No. 411A white sauce finished with cream, made up separately and passed at table. Whatever the detail of Ranhofer's version, make it thin enough to pour from a sauceboat; it should ribbon off the spoon, not mound.
- Cook the vegetables separatelyCook the vegetables to their own timings -- the recipe says only that the whole is cooked in salted water, but potatoes, carrots and turnips each need different times, and sprouts and peas want fast cooking in a large volume of hard-boiling salted water to hold their colour. One pan for everything gives grey sprouts and collapsed peas.
- Salt the water properlyNothing else seasons these vegetables, and the sauce is deliberately mild. Ranhofer gives no quantity; salt the water until it tastes distinctly of salt.
- YieldA pullet of this size serves four, or six if the garnish is generous. Allow about 6 oz of vegetables per person across the five kinds.
Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is the codified record of that repertoire, organised so that a professional could work from cross-references rather than repeated instructions. The block of capon and pullet recipes runs through a long list of national styles, and "à l'anglaise" is the plainest of them: boiled bird, boiled vegetables, a sauce served apart. That formula descends from the English boiled fowl with parsley or white sauce that was a fixture of nineteenth-century dinner tables, though in French kitchen usage the label à l'anglaise covered a range of preparations, including egg-and-breadcrumbed items.