No. 2463

Chickens Ecarlate a la Derenne

Poulets Ecarlate a la Derenne

This piece is dressed on an oval wooden bottom covered with white paper and fastened on a long dish, having in the center a slightly conical-shaped wooden support also covered with paper and a hole bored in the top to hold a hatelet. Cook in water four large claves' tongues or small red beef tongues; drain and cool under a weight. Break the breast bone of four small, singed and cleaned chickens, then remove the bone and fill up the empty space with galantine forcemeat (No. 65) mixed with truffles and cooked foies-gras cut in dice; then sew up the breast skin on the back. Truss these chickens with the legs bent under the skin, lard the tops and wrap each one in a small piece of fine muslin without tightening them too much; cook for one hour in stock (No. 194a), but very slowly, so as not to spoil their shape, then let get very cold, drain and untruss. Detach the breasts from the back part of the chicken and cut them up in slices, then once across, keeping them in good shape, and return them to their original places. Lay the chickens on a grater, cover over with white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596), properly thickened, and let it get cold. Dress the chickens upright on the oval foundation laid on the dish, leaning them against the support and alternating each one with a tongue previously pared, skinned and cut in lengths, but returned to the original position, then glazed over with a brush. Surround the chickens on the base with a piping of chopped thick jelly pushed through a cornet and between every tongue and chicken lay a well-rounded peeled truffle cooked in white wine and glazed over with a brush. Lay all around the outside of the foundation triangular crusts of very clear jelly, and fasten a hatelet into the top garnished with jelly and a peeled truffle. It is advisable to serve this dish with a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606) in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 2462 Chaudfroid of Turkey a la Perigord The Cold Service No. 2464 Chicken Fillets a la Mirebel →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold buffet centerpiece from Ranhofer's Delmonico's, written for a brigade with a larder full of cross-referenced preparations. The construction is straightforward once you see that it is three separate cold cookeries — tongue, boned stuffed chicken, aspic — assembled at the end.

The hinge: cool everything completely before assemblyChaudfroid will not set on warm poultry and warm poultry will not hold a carved shape. The chickens must be chilled through before slicing and coating (the recipe weights only the tongues, not the birds). Coat the birds cold, on a rack over a tray, and re-melt and re-strain the drippings for a second coat.
"Ecarlate" means cured tongueThe scarlet color comes from tongue cured in brine with saltpetre (potassium nitrate) in a period kitchen, or with nitrite in a modern cure, not from cooking. Buy tongue already cured and cooked, or cured raw tongue from a butcher. Uncured tongue simmers up grey-brown and the dish loses its whole point.
Tongue timing"Cook in water" understates it. Calves' tongues need roughly 2 to 2.5 hours at a bare simmer, beef tongue 3 hours or more, until a skewer slides in with no resistance. Peel the skin while still hot, then press under a weighted plate until cold.
Doneness of the stuffed birdsOne hour of very slow poaching suited the small chickens Ranhofer specifies, considerably lighter than a supermarket roaster. With a larger modern bird, the forcemeat is the limiting factor: it contains raw poultry and must reach 165F at the thickest point. Hold the stock at 170 to 180F — never a rolling boil, which splits the seams and buckles the shape.
Forcemeat and foie grasNo. 65 is Ranhofer's galantine forcemeat, a pounded, egg-bound mixture given its own number elsewhere in the book; check it there rather than assuming its contents. A modern chicken mousseline — breast meat, egg white and cream in the processor, well chilled — behaves better and slices just as cleanly. Cooked foie gras in dice can be replaced with a good pork or duck liver pate cut cold.
Chaudfroid and jellyNo. 596 is a velouté-based white sauce fortified with gelatinous stock; "properly thickened" means coating consistency at cool room temperature, about the thickness of heavy cream. Modern practice is to build it on a well-reduced chicken stock plus enough powdered gelatin to set firm, then strain twice. The clear jelly for the triangles and the piping is the same stock clarified with egg white and set harder.
Larding"Lard the tops" means threading strips of fatback through the breast skin with a larding needle. Skip it and bard instead: lay thin sheets of fatback or caul fat over the breasts before wrapping, and remove them before coating.
Muslin, hatelets and the wooden baseThe muslin wrap is a loose bandage that keeps the boned bird in shape while poaching — cheesecloth or a plastic-free poaching bag does the same. A hatelet is an ornamental silver skewer, purely decorative; a wooden or metal skewer works, or leave it off. The papered wooden plinth is stage scenery and can be replaced with a shallow bowl inverted under a cloth.
YieldFour small chickens and four tongues, sliced, serve 10 to 14 as part of a cold table. Cut the whole thing down to one chicken and one calf's tongue for a household portion; the method is identical.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the cold service section is the most nineteenth-century part of the book: dishes engineered to be looked at from across a lit dining room, mounted on papered plinths, glazed with aspic, spiked with silver hatelets. Ecarlate is simply French for scarlet and in cookery it is shorthand for tongue cured in saltpetre brine, langue a l'ecarlate, whose bright pink cut face was prized as a color contrast against white chaudfroid and black truffle the same palette Ranhofer reaches for again and again. The a la Derenne tag is one of the hundreds of personal dedications scattered through the book, presumably a Delmonico's patron or colleague; Ranhofer rarely explains these and no firm identification is documented. What the recipe really records is the labor economy of a large brigade: nothing here is difficult, but it depends on a larder already stocked with galantine forcemeat, clarified jelly, cooked foie gras and truffles in white wine, each with its own number elsewhere in the volume.