No. 2214

Boudins of Chicken a l'Ecarlate

Boudins de Volaille a l'Ecarlate

This entree is dressed on a low rice croustade (Fig. 9a) slightly hollowed on top. First cook two small red beef tongues in boiling water with the pared meats taken from a large raw chicken, prepare a quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), keeping it rather firm; season tastily and smooth by working it with a spoon, then finish by incorporating in slowly some bechamel sauce (No. 409) reduced with chopped fresh mushrooms until it becomes succulent and thick, but do not pass it through a sieve. After the sauce is well mixed with the forcemeat divide it into seven or eight equal parts and roll these into pieces, two and a half inches long and three-quarters of an inch thick, on a floured table, press them down a little with the blade of a knife to decrease their thickness. Range these boudins as soon as done one beside the other on a lightly buttered raised-edge baking tin and cover with salted hot water, then heat the liquid until the forcemeat hardens. Drain the boudins on a cloth, pare them evenly and dip them in beaten egg-whites, then in white bread-crumbs. Now drain the tongues, cut them into lengthwise slices not too thin, and pare them at once, giving them an oval shape, then cutting them lengthwise through the center: roll them in a sautoir with half-glaze (No. 400) so as to cover them lightly and dress them in a row, alternating each one with a boudin; cover these with a little good reduced veloute (No. 415) mixed with a montglas composed of chicken with half as many truffles and mushrooms cut in fillets. Surround the base with a chain of small round truffles glazed over with a brush. Send to the table at the same time a sauce-boat of veloute sauce.

← No. 2213 Border of Risot of Lobsters or Spiny Lobster Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2215 Boudins of Chicken a la Soubise →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, veloute and forcemeat standing by, so the entry reads as an assembly note rather than a recipe. Everything below is what a modern cook has to supply or decide.

The hinge: poach, never boilThe boudins are set in salted hot water on a buttered tray and the liquid is only heated until the forcemeat firms, well below a boil. Ranhofer gives no temperature and no timing, so judge by firmness. A hard boil risks bursting the rolls and coarsening the forcemeat.
"A l'ecarlate" means cured tongueScarlet tongue is beef tongue brined with salt and saltpetre (nitre), which is what gives it the pink colour the dish is named for; the recipe assumes you start with "red" tongues already cured. Buy a ready-cured tongue (often sold as pickled or corned) rather than curing one at home without measured quantities; simmer until a skewer slides in, then peel the skin while hot.
The cross-referencesNo. 89 is Ranhofer's quenelle forcemeat; No. 409 is bechamel, No. 400 half-glaze (demi-glace), No. 415 veloute. Without those four you have no recipe, so read them first or substitute your own versions of each.
"Pared meats" and the raw chickenThe meat pared off the bird goes into the water with the tongues. Ranhofer does not say whether that boiled chicken is only there to enrich the liquid or is also the cooked chicken later called for in the montglas.
Mushroom bechamel, unstrainedThe bechamel is reduced with finely chopped mushrooms and deliberately not sieved; the duxelles-like grit is part of the texture. Reduce it until it mounds on the spoon, then cool it before beating it into the forcemeat or the mixture will slacken past rolling consistency.
Breading with no frying stepThe boudins are egged and crumbed after poaching, and Ranhofer never says what happens next; the text goes straight on to the tongues and the dressing. Crumbs imply a browning step, presumably in butter in a sautoir, but the recipe does not specify one. The interior is already cooked either way.
MontglasA garnish of cooked chicken, truffle and mushroom cut in short julienne (here chicken to half as much truffle and mushroom), bound in the reduced veloute. Truffle at this scale is a period luxury; brown mushroom julienne carries the dish, if not the name.
Vessels and yieldA sautoir is a straight-sided saute pan; the "raised-edge baking tin" is a rimmed sheet pan. The recipe makes seven or eight boudins, alternated with tongue slices on the rice croustade. Ranhofer states no number of servings.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style exactly: nothing is made from scratch on the page because the sauces, forcemeats and glazes are already numbered items in the larder. Boudin here is not blood sausage: the word's primary sense is sausage, but in kitchen usage it is often extended to a forcemeat shaped into a small cylinder. A l'ecarlate, "in scarlet," is the old term for beef tongue cured in a nitre brine, which fixes the meat a bright pink; the name is generally traced to that colour rather than to any place or person, and it appears across nineteenth-century French menus attached to tongue in almost every form. The alternating pink and pale rows on a rice croustade, ringed with glazed truffles, are a reminder that a Delmonico's entree was expected to be looked at before it was eaten.