No. 2240

Cream of Partridge or Chicken

Crème de Pretrial ou de Poulet

Pound the meats taken from two roast partridges or chickens, with a piece of butter, a few parings of cooked foies-gras and two or three spoonfuls of reduced veloute sauce (No. 415); pass the whole through a sieve. Dilute this pulp with ten egg-yolks and one whole one, two gills of good raw cream and two gills of very concentrated game fumet (No. 397) prepared with the partridge bones or those of the chickens. Pour this preparation into a small vegetable dish or small buttered timbale molds (No. 1, Fig. 137), and poach in a bain-marie, done by placing the dish in a saucepan containing hot water, having this water quiver only and not boil. As soon as the cream is set, remove to serve.

← No. 2239 Casserole of Rice with Chicken or Young Guin Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2241 Cream of Pheasant, Chantilly →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a savoury custard, not a soup: a pounded forcemeat of roast bird loosened with egg and cream, then set gently in a water bath. The hinge is the water temperature, which must never reach a simmer.

Quivering water, never boilingHold the bain-marie water below a simmer, roughly 170-180F. At a rolling boil the eleven eggs' worth of yolk curdles and weeps and the cream breaks into grains. Ranhofer specifies a saucepan of hot water on the stove; he gives no oven setting for this dish.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of cream is 1 cup, and two gills of fumet another cup, against ten yolks and one whole egg — a rich custard ratio, roughly comparable to a royale.
DonenessIt is set when the centre barely trembles and a knife point comes out clean; about 175F internal. The recipe gives no timing, only "as soon as the cream is set" -- small moulds will be ready well before a single deep dish, so judge by the tremble rather than the clock.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux thinned with veal or chicken stock and reduced. Two or three spoonfuls of any thick, well-reduced white sauce will do the same work here, which is binding the pounded meat.
Game fumet (No. 397)Bones, trimmings and aromatics simmered and reduced hard to a strongly concentrated stock. A cup of very reduced roast-bird stock is the point; a weak broth makes the custard bland and slack.
Partridge and foie grasFarmed partridge is sold by game dealers; two birds yield only a modest amount of meat, so two small roast chickens are the practical substitute. The foie gras parings are seasoning and richness, not structure, and can be left out.
Pounding and sievingA food processor replaces the mortar, but still push the purée through a fine sieve or tamis afterwards. Sinew and stray fibre are what make this dish coarse.
YieldAbout six to eight small timbales as an entrée course, or one dish for four. Serve warm, unmoulded or spooned, with a spoonful of the same fumet reduced to a glaze.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to a family of French preparations — crèmes, mousses and royales — in which a cooked meat is pounded, sieved, bound with egg and cream, and poached in a water bath. The technique lent itself to using up the flesh of roast game birds: a brace of partridges carries little meat, but pounded and enriched it stretches into a delicate course for a table already several dishes deep. The section heading "Miscellaneous Entrées" is a reminder of what an entrée meant then, a dish served in sequence between larger courses rather than the main event. The instruction to keep the bain-marie water "quiver only and not boil" is the whole craft of the egg-bound cream in a single phrase.