No. 2215

Boudins of Chicken a la Soubise

Boudins de Volaille a la Soubise

Have half a pound of leaf lard chopped up very finely, add to it one ounce of soaked and pressed bread-crumbs, pound the two together, then press through a sieve. Put this into a bowl with half a pound of raw chicken meat minced very finely, mingle well together and gradually add half a pint of soubise onion puree (No. 723), nine raw egg-yolks, a quarter of a pound of raw truffles (if obtainable), cut in three-sixteenths inch squares, and with this preparation fill some ready prepared sheep's casings three inches long and one inch in diameter, not too full, throw them into boiling water, remove them almost immediately and prick them with a larding needle, then broil them over a very slow fire; serve a soubise sauce (No. 543) in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 2214 Boudins of Chicken a l'Ecarlate Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2216 Boudins of Chicken au Cardinal →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a boudin blanc built on a chicken and lard farce, bound with a startling number of raw yolks. Everything depends on cooking it slowly enough that the yolks set without bursting the casings.

The hinge: gentle heat onlyNine yolks in a pound and a half of farce means this sets like a custard. A hard boil or a hot grill curdles the mixture and splits the casings. The brief plunge into boiling water is only to firm the surface; the actual cooking is slow radiant heat, and the sausages are done at 165F internal.
Why prick the casingsPiercing with a larding needle (a thin skewer works the same way) lets steam escape as the farce expands. Combined with filling the casings "not too full," this is what keeps them intact on the grill.
Leaf lardThe fat from around the pig's kidneys, sold rendered or unrendered by butchers and some farm markets. Here it is used raw and chopped, so unrendered leaf fat or plain hard back fat is what you want, not the shelf-stable hydrogenated lard in a tub.
Soaked and pressed bread-crumbsFresh crumb, not dry crumbs: soak in milk or water, then squeeze nearly dry. One ounce is about a half cup of fresh crumb before soaking. It works with the pounded fat as a panade to hold moisture in the farce.
Soubise puréeSoubise puree -- Ranhofer sends you to his No. 723; classically a soubise puree is onions blanched, stewed slowly in butter with a little rice or thick bechamel, then sieved, though the exact formula is in the numbered recipe rather than here. Half a pint is one cup, and it should be thick enough to mound on a spoon or the farce will not hold its shape.
TrufflesRaw black truffle at a quarter pound is a luxury few will match. Cooked truffle trimmings, or a smaller quantity of fresh truffle, give the same effect; truffle oil does not, since the point here is the diced texture in a pale farce.
Sheep's casingsNatural sheep casings, sold salted, need rinsing and a soak in cool water before use. Note the dimensions: three inches long and one inch across is a fat, short sausage, not a breakfast link. Only the widest sheep casings reach that diameter, so hog casings are the easier modern substitute.
Yield and serviceService -- The recipe gives no yield. Serve the soubise sauce (a bechamel finished with onion puree) separately as directed, with nothing acidic alongside -- the dish is deliberately mild and pale.

A Little History

Both the purée and the sauce take their name from Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, an eighteenth-century French marshal whose kitchen is traditionally credited with the onion purée that still carries his title; like most such attributions it is culinary lore rather than documented fact, but the name stuck and by the nineteenth century "à la Soubise" simply meant onions cooked to softness and sieved. The dish itself belongs to the family of boudins blancs, white sausages of pounded white meat, fat and eggs that predate the modern sausage grinder and were made by pounding in a mortar and forcing through a sieve. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, printed it in The Epicurean (1894) as one of a long series of chicken boudins — à l'écarlate, au cardinal, and others — each identical in method and distinguished only by its garnish and sauce, which is exactly how the grand restaurant repertoire of the period was organised: one technique, endlessly renamed.