Pullet, Modern Style

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a larder and a stack of cross-referenced base recipes, so the page assumes far more than it states. Here is what the shorthand means and where the dish will actually succeed or fail.

• The hinge: stuff under the skin, not just the cavity"Fill the breasts" means loosening the skin over the breast and packing the forcemeat between skin and flesh, which bastes the lean breast from inside as it braises. The cavity gets the remainder. Skip the breast layer and the bird cooks dry no matter how good the sauce is.
• PulletA young hen, generally under a year and not yet laying steadily; in the trade it meant a tender bird of roughly 3 to 4 lb. A good free-range or air-chilled roasting chicken of that weight is the direct substitute.
• PanadaA binding paste of bread or flour cooked with milk or stock until it forms a stiff mass, then cooled. One pound of it is a large amount, appropriate to the scale of an Epicurean kitchen; for a single 4 lb bird you need perhaps a quarter of the total forcemeat given.
• Foies-gras, rawRanhofer means raw fresh duck or goose liver, pounded into the farce and cooked through in the braise. Prepared terrine or mousse will not behave the same way, as it is already cooked and heavily seasoned.
• Grated fat porkFirm back fat, chilled hard and grated on a box grater so it disperses evenly. Fatback or unsmoked salt pork, rinsed of surface salt, is the closest thing on a modern counter. Do not substitute bacon; the smoke and cure dominate.
• Rub through a sieveThe nineteenth-century tamis stage. A food processor gets you most of the way, but pass the farce through a drum sieve or fine mesh afterward for a properly smooth texture.
• Braise, No. 12Ranhofer's cross-referenced braising method, which in this period generally meant the bird set on a bed of aromatics in a covered pot with a small quantity of stock, cooked gently so it steams and bastes rather than boils. The book gives no temperature; a low modern oven, roughly 300 to 325F, is a reasonable equivalent. Cook to 165F in the thigh and in the centre of the forcemeat.
• Cocks'-combsBlanched, peeled and simmered rooster combs, a standard garnish of the period and effectively unobtainable now outside specialist butchers. Small glazed turned mushrooms or additional truffle slices stand in without pretending to be the same thing.
• Two pounds of trufflesNot a misprint, and the reason this recipe belonged to Delmonico's rather than a domestic kitchen. At current prices the truffles alone would cost more than the rest of the meal several times over; scale to what you can justify, using the peelings in the farce exactly as written since that is where they do the most work.
• The sauceStrain and reduce the braising liquid, combine with velouté, and mount with cold butter off the heat. Once the butter is in, the sauce must not boil or it will break.
• YieldA 4 lb bird with this much forcemeat serves six generously, with the buttered chicken purée passed separately as Ranhofer directs.