No. 2278

Escalops of Chicken, Financiere

Escalopes de Poulet Financiere

Lift off the breasts from four fine chickens; remove the minion fillets, and suppress the skin; cut the breasts crosswise into three-sixteenths of an inch thick slices, pare these lightly to ovals and range them in a sautoir with clarified butter. Streak the minions with truffles, form them into circles, and place in a buttered sautoir. Saute the prepared escalops on a hot fire, drain off the butter, and add quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, and some financiere sauce (No. 464). Poach the minion fillets; dress the escalops inside a decorated chicken cream forcemeat border, or else in a croustade, and serve separately a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with Madeira, or if for white, replace this by some good veloute sauce (No. 415).

← No. 2277 Escalops of Beef Palates with Puree of Chest Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2279 Escalops of Fat Livers a la Villeneuve →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stock pot always going and a numbered sauce book at hand; the dish is really an assembly of four separate preparations. Read it as a plan rather than a procedure.

What a sautoir isA straight-sided shallow pan, essentially a modern saute pan or skillet. Escalops go in one uncrowded layer; the buttered sautoir for the minions is used as a covered poaching pan, not for browning.
Minion filletsThe filet mignon of the bird, the small tender strip lying under each breast. Four chickens give eight of them. "Streaked with truffles" means shallow slits cut in the surface and filled with slivers of truffle, so the black shows through when poached white.
Thickness matters more than the panThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm. Cut across the grain, trimmed to ovals, at that thickness the slices cook through in roughly a minute a side over high heat. Anything thicker and you are browning the outside while the centre stays raw; anything thinner shreds.
The hinge: sauce goes in off the heat of browningSear the escalops, pour off the butter, then add the garnish and sauce. The chicken should not simmer in the financiere sauce, which is a finished, reduced sauce; a few minutes more and lean breast meat turns dry and fibrous.
Financiere sauce and garnishNo. 464 is Ranhofer's financiere sauce; the page does not spell out its contents, but in the classical tradition it is a Madeira-flavoured brown sauce. The classic financiere garnish is quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, olives and cockscombs. Cockscombs are effectively unobtainable now and can be dropped without harm. A good demi-glace reduced with Madeira stands in for the sauce.
Quenelles and the forcemeat borderChicken cream forcemeat is raw breast pounded (now processed) with egg white and cream, pushed through a sieve. A decorated border of this kind was normally lined and set in a buttered border mould poached gently in a bain-marie; piping the same mixture into a ring and setting it in a steamer or low oven is a modern shortcut. Small spoonfuls poached in stock make the quenelles. A baked pastry croustade is the simpler route.
White versionIf serving as a white entree, the recipe swaps the demi-glace for veloute (No. 415); it says nothing about changing the cooking, though keeping the escalops pale rather than browned follows the logic of a white entree.
YieldEight breast halves cut into escalops will serve eight to ten as a plated entree in the nineteenth-century sense, or six generously as a main course. The carcasses and legs should go into the stock the sauce is built from.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is essentially the working repertoire of a large French kitchen written out in numbered cross-references. Financiere is one of the grand classical garnishes, its name often traced to the financiers of nineteenth-century Paris, and built to look expensive: truffles, quenelles, mushrooms, olives, cockscombs and a Madeira-scented brown sauce. Its appearance here, in a run of "escalops" made from beef palates, fat livers and chicken breast, shows how a Gilded Age kitchen thought about the breast of a chicken - not as the default cut it is now, but as a costly white meat worth slicing thin, trimming to ovals and dressing inside a piped forcemeat ring. The eight little minion fillets inlaid with truffle are pure garde-manger display, the kind of work only possible where labour was cheap and plentiful.