No. 2002

Pullets' Minion Fillets with Macedoine

Filets Mignons de Poularde a la Macedoine

Pare twelve pullets' minion fillets, remove the outer skin and inside sinew; pare and streak with three-quarter circles of red beef tongue cut into graduated sizes; range them on the bottom of a sautoir and cover with clarified butter, forming each one into the shape of a crescent, salt, sprinkle with butter, and cook in a slow oven, then drain off. Cover a dish with a garnishing of macedoine vegetables mixed with bechamel (No. 680), and finished with a few spoonfuls of melted glaze (No. 402) and several small pats of fresh butter; surround this with the minion fillets. Fill some crescent-shaped bottomless molds placed on a sheet of buttered paper with quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) leveled to the height of the mold with the blade of a knife. Place a sautoir on the fire containing clarified butter, set in the molds having the paper on top, push in the oven to detach the paper; remove this and lay the sautoir on the fire to color the crescent to a fine color on both sides; unmold, drain, and dress the minion fillets on these, and around arrange the macedoine garnishing (No. 680).

← No. 2001 Pullets' Breasts a la Visconti Capon & Pullet No. 2003 Pullets' Legs a la Bayonnaise →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a plated composition rather than a single dish: butter-poached chicken tenderloins studded with tongue, set on fried forcemeat crescents, with a diced vegetable garnish. Read it as three separate preparations assembled at the end.

What a minion fillet isThe filet mignon of a bird is the small inner muscle lying under the breast — what a supermarket sells as the chicken tender. Twelve of them means six birds; buy a package of tenders instead. A pullet is a young hen under about a year, so ordinary young chicken is the right substitute.
Streaking with tongue"Pare and streak" here means cut shallow slits in the surface and inlay crescents of cooked red beef tongue, graded from large to small, so the finished fillet reads as a striped crescent. Pickled or cured tongue from a deli counter gives the red colour intended; the decoration is the whole point of the dish and can be skipped only by abandoning it.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a casserole dish. The fillets sit in one layer and the recipe says to cover them with clarified butter, so use a pan just large enough that the butter comes over them.
Slow ovenRead as somewhere in the 275-325F range. The fillets are thin and lean; they are done at 165F internal, which will take roughly 10-15 minutes. Ranhofer gives no time, and tenders overcook quickly into cotton.
The cross-referencesThe book sends you to No. 680 for both bechamel and the macedoine garnish, which cannot both be right. Take it as: dice carrot, turnip, green beans and peas small and even, cook them separately until just tender, then bind lightly with bechamel, a little meat glaze and cold butter off the heat.
GlazeNo. 402 is glace de viande, brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm. A spoonful of commercial demi-glace or heavily reduced stock does the same work; it is there for gloss and depth, not for volume.
The forcemeat crescentsBottomless crescent cutters on buttered paper, filled with quenelle forcemeat and levelled flat, then set in hot clarified butter paper-side up. The oven heat releases the paper; then the pan goes back on the stove to brown both faces. Chill the filled molds firm before frying or the forcemeat will slump when unmolded.
YieldTwo fillets and two crescents per person, so six servings as a course in a long menu — four as a modern main.

A Little History

This is No. 2002 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of thirty-odd years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows how that kitchen worked: numbered cross-references to component preparations, French titles, and a garnish that names the whole dish. Macedoine — a mixture of small, evenly diced vegetables — is generally explained as a culinary joke on Macedonia, the mixed empire of Alexander, though the etymology is traditional rather than documented; it entered French cookery vocabulary in the eighteenth century and by Ranhofer's day was standard for both vegetable and fruit mixtures. The labour here is characteristic of the period's restaurant service: six birds are broken down to yield twelve small muscles, each inlaid by hand with graduated crescents of tongue, and each set on its own fried crescent of forcemeat, all so that a diner sees a ring of matched shapes around a bound vegetable garnish.