No. 2257

Chicken Cutlets a la Adolphe Hardy

Cotelettes de Poulet a la Adolphe Hardy

Chop up finely one pound of raw chicken fillets after suppressing all the sinews and fat; add half the same quantity of fresh butter, season and mix the whole well together. Divide the preparation into two inch in diameter balls and shape them like a cutlet; dip in beaten eggs and bread-crumbs and fry in clarified butter; drain and decorate with favor frills (No. 10). Range them in a circle, filling the center with a garnishing of minced cepes fried in butter, drained and moistened with cream reduced with the cepes, season and just when ready to serve finish with a piece of butter, lemon juice and chives minced very fine.

← No. 2256 Cutlets of Tenderloin of Beef a la Bienville Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2258 Chicken Cutlets a la Clarence →

For the Modern Kitchen

A forcemeat cutlet: chopped raw chicken bound with its own weight in butter, shaped, breaded and fried. The proportions are the whole trick, and they are richer than they look on the page.

The butter is half the weight, not half a stickOne pound of chicken takes eight ounces of butter, worked in cold. That fat is what keeps the ground meat from setting into a dry puck, but it also means these are very rich; two per person is plenty.
"Suppressing" sinewsRanhofer's translated French for removing them. Pull the white tendon from each tenderloin and trim every scrap of gristle and fat before chopping, or the cutlets will be stringy.
Chop, don't puréeA food processor will do the work in seconds, but pulse it. Run continuously and the butter emulsifies into a smooth mousseline, which is a different dish; the texture wanted here is a fine chop that still reads as meat.
Shaping and chillingTwo-inch balls flattened into small cutlets. Chill them firm before breading, or the butter softens and they slump in the pan. A bone-shaped bit of dry macaroni is sometimes cited as a way to give the frill something to grip; a short piece of pasta works the same way.
Cook them throughThis is raw ground poultry. Fry in clarified butter over moderate heat so the crumb browns as the interior comes up, and take them to 165F at the center rather than judging by color.
CèpesBoletus edulis, sold now as porcini. Fresh are seasonal and expensive; an ounce of dried, soaked and squeezed, then minced and fried in butter, gives the same flavor, and the strained soaking liquid can be reduced into the cream.
The garnish sauceReduce the cream with the mushrooms until it coats, then pull the pan off the heat before mounting it with butter and adding lemon and chives. Boiling after the lemon goes in will split it.
Favor frillsNo. 10 refers to Ranhofer's paper frills, the pleated cuffs slipped over a chop bone. Purely decorative, and the dish loses nothing without them.
YieldAbout eight cutlets, serving four as a course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and it is full of dishes carrying the names of patrons, colleagues and occasions — a house practice that doubled as a guest book. The construction here is older than the name: a côtelette made not from a rib but from chopped meat bound with butter and shaped to imitate one, a conceit French kitchens applied to chicken, game and fish throughout the nineteenth century, and a form it shares with the Russian pojarski cutlet, though the line of descent from either to the modern breaded chicken Kiev is not documented. The cèpes point to the autumn table; boletus was gathered wild rather than farmed — it still resists cultivation — and its appearance in a dish signaled the season as clearly as the frills signaled the price.