No. 2327

Chicken Quenelles a la Richelleu

Quenelles de Volaille a la Richelieu

Decorate some oval-shaped molds with fanciful cuts of very black truffles. Pound one ounce of truffles with the same quantity of cooked rice and half as much fresh butter, adding one or two spoonfuls of bechamel sauce (No. 409), pass all through a sieve and let get very cold. Garnish half of the molds with chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), lay the prepared truffle puree in the center, cover over with more forcemeat and poach them in a slack oven; as soon as they are firm to the touch, unmold and dress them crown-shaped; serve separately a Perigueux sauce (No. 517).

← No. 2326 Chicken Quenelles a la Drew Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2328 Chicken Quenelles, Bretonne →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composite recipe in the Delmonico style: it assumes you already have chicken forcemeat, béchamel and Périgueux sauce standing by, and gives you only the assembly. The hinge is the heat — quenelle forcemeat is an emulsion of pounded chicken, panada and cream, and it will curdle and weep if it is cooked hard.

"Poach in a slack oven"A slack oven is the coolest working heat, roughly 275–300F. Ranhofer does not say so here, but molds of this kind were normally set in a water bath; if you use one, the water must never come above a shiver, since boiling water splits the forcemeat and the quenelles turn grainy.
Judging doneness"Firm to the touch" means the surface springs back and no longer feels slack under a fingertip — usually 15–25 minutes for small oval molds. An instant-read thermometer at 165F in the center is the reliable check the original could not offer.
Chicken quenelle forcemeatRanhofer's No. 89 is a pounded raw chicken forcemeat worked with a panada and butter and passed through a sieve; forcemeats of this type are generally lightened with cream and egg. A food processor does the pounding in seconds, but keep everything refrigerator-cold and do not overrun the machine or the fat breaks out.
The moldsSmall oval molds, generously buttered, so the truffle decoration releases cleanly. Silicone molds work but give a softer edge to the fanciful cuts.
TrufflesAn ounce of black truffle is a serious purchase now; this was a luxury dish in 1894 as well. Preserved winter truffle in its own juice is the closest practical substitute, and its liquid can go into the purée. Truffle oil is a different flavor entirely and will read as synthetic against the plain forcemeat.
The cooked ricePlain rice boiled soft, no seasoning — it is a binder for the truffle purée, not a flavor. Pound it while warm so it sieves smoothly, then chill the purée hard before it goes into the molds or it will bleed into the forcemeat.
Périgueux sauceDemi-glace finished with chopped truffle and Madeira. If you are not making a classical demi-glace, a well-reduced brown chicken stock mounted with butter carries the truffle well enough.
Yield and serviceAn ounce of truffle purée fills perhaps eight to twelve small quenelles — a first course for four. "Dress crown-shaped" means a ring on a round platter, sauce passed at the table rather than poured over, so the truffle inlay stays visible.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its thousands of cross-referenced numbers make it read more like an engineering manual than a cookbook. The Richelieu garnish is one of the many nineteenth-century French preparations named for an aristocratic house — generally attributed to the Duc de Richelieu, though as with most such attributions the connection is culinary convention rather than documented fact. What identifies the dish is the truffle: cut in shapes to line the mold, pounded into the hidden center, and chopped again into the sauce that accompanies it, so the same ingredient appears three times in three textures. Quenelles themselves were a staple of the classical entrée course, prized because a sieved, cream-lightened forcemeat could be molded into any decorative form; the labor of pounding meat through a tammy by hand is exactly the kind of work a brigade kitchen could supply and a home cook could not.