No. 1993

Pullet with Croustades Financiere

Poularde aux Croustades Financiere

Draw a pullet, singe and free it well of all the pin feathers adhering to the flesh; truss as for an entree (No. 178) and rub over with lemon juice; wrap it up in thin slices of fat pork, tying it on firmly. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with bards of fat pork, slices of veal, two slices of raw, smoked ham, a few cut up carrots, two onions, two cloves, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, and season with salt and whole peppers; place it on the fire and let simmer for an hour or more and when done, strain the stock through a napkin, remove its fat and reduce it with two gills of espagnole (No. 414). Drain the pullet, untruss and lay it on a dish, garnishing around with some croustades made in molds (No. 3, Fig. 137) and filled with financiere salpicon (No. 667).

← No. 1992 Truffled Roasted Pullet Capon & Pullet No. 1994 Pullet with Mussels or Oysters →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a classic poêlé — a bird cooked in a covered pan on a bed of fat, meat and aromatics rather than in liquid — finished with a garnish of filled pastry cases. Ranhofer assumes you have his stock recipes and molds on hand; the notes below cover what you need to stand in for them.

What a pullet isA young hen, under a year old and typically 3 to 4 lb dressed. Any good 3 1/2 lb roasting chicken works; a larger bird will need longer.
Two gills of espagnoleA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. Espagnole (his No. 414) is the brown mother sauce — a rich veal-and-tomato-scented brown sauce thickened with roux. A cup of good reduced brown sauce or a well-made demi-glace serves the same purpose.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of pork fatback used to line the pan and wrap the bird. Fresh fatback or thinly sliced unsmoked pork belly is the closest thing; if you can only find salt pork, blanch it two minutes first or the finished sauce will be too salty to reduce.
The bed is the cooking methodNo stock is added; the bird cooks on the bed of fat, meat and vegetables and gives up its own juices, which are strained and reduced into the sauce. Ranhofer does not specify a lid; keep the heat low so nothing scorches.
An hour or moreTime varies with the bird. Cook to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, which for a 3 1/2 lb bird is usually 55 to 70 minutes; a larger bird will take longer.
Strain through a napkinNineteenth-century kitchens filtered stock through wet linen. A double layer of damp cheesecloth in a fine strainer does the same job. Let the fat rise and spoon it off, or chill briefly and lift it, before reducing.
Croustades and financière salpiconThe croustades are small molded cases of fried bread or puff pastry. A salpicon is a fine dice bound in sauce; the financière version is truffles, mushrooms, quenelles, cockscombs and olives in Madeira-laced sauce. Diced sauteed mushrooms with a little Madeira and brown sauce is a defensible modern reading — leave out the cockscombs.
YieldOne bird serves about four as a main course. The recipe does not specify how many croustades to make. Carve the pullet at table and set the filled cases around it so they stay crisp.

A Little History

This comes from The Epicurean (1894), Charles Ranhofer's enormous summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows how the book actually worked: almost every dish is a chain of cross-references to other numbered recipes, so a single pullet draws in a truss, a mold, a sauce and a salpicon from four other pages. The garnish name financiere belongs to the nineteenth-century French classification of composed garnishes and is generally taken to signal expense — truffles, cockscombs, quenelles and Madeira, the kind of plate a banker's dinner would carry. The distinction between pullet and capon that gives this section its heading mattered to Ranhofer's market in a way it no longer does to ours: birds arrived at different ages, fats and degrees of toughness, and the cook chose the method to suit. Gentle cooking on a bed of fat and aromatics, as here, was one answer for a tender young bird that would dry out roasted and lose its flavor if boiled.