No. 2464

Chicken Fillets a la Mirebel

Filets de Poulet a la Mirebel

Raise and pare twelve chicken breasts; remove the minion fillets and the skin from the larger ones as well as the pellicle covering the minions and the sinews. Streak half of the minion fillets with truffles and the other half with red beef tongue, then shape them like turbans; lay them on a buttered baking sheet and place in the oven for a few minutes to poach; remove and set under a light weight until cold. Cover with half-set jelly and fill the interiors with a puree of foies-gras pushed in through a cornet, and on top of each lay a small, very white, cooked channeled mushroom (No. 118) covered with half-set jelly. Poach the larger fillets in butter and lemon juice, lay them under a weight and pare again into half-hearts, cover over with jelly and decorate with fanciful star-shaped cuts of truffles and tongue dipped in half-set jelly. For this use a round mold two and a quarter inches in diameter, and one-eighth of an inch deep. Cut and then arrange in the pieces of truffle and tongue as shown in Fig. 479, first dipping them in half-set jelly; when this is hard, unmold and place these stars on the largest part of the fillet and cover the whole with half-cold jelly. (These stars are used for lamb cutlets. Leverrier.) Fill the basin of a dish with chopped jelly; after the large fillets are cold decorate with favor frills (No. 10) and dress them in a circle; surround with more chopped jelly and croutons, laying the minion fillets around. Cut up some lettuce hearts, season with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, mix thoroughly, drain and place this salad in the center of the dish; serve a vinaigrette mayonnaise separately.

← No. 2463 Chickens Ecarlate a la Derenne The Cold Service No. 2465 Chicken Breasts a la Renaissance →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a cold buffet centrepiece from Delmonico's, built entirely on aspic work. Nothing here is difficult, but the whole thing depends on the jelly being at exactly the right stage, so read the notes on that first.

"Half-set jelly" is the hingeThis means a clear, well-seasoned chicken aspic cooled to the point where it is syrupy and just beginning to hold — cool it over ice water and watch it. Too warm and it runs off the fillets and washes the truffle cuts out of place; too cold and it goes cloudy and lumpy and will not coat evenly. Keep a bowl of it over tepid water and a second over ice so you can move it back and forth.
Minion filletsThe filet mignon of the breast, sold today as the chicken tender. Twelve breasts give twelve tenders; pull the white sinew out by gripping the end and scraping the meat back along it with the back of a knife.
"Streak with truffles"Cut the truffle and tongue into thin matchsticks and inlay them into shallow slits in the meat, the way one would lard with fat. It is decoration, not seasoning.
Poaching, and the temperature that matters"A few minutes in the oven" means gentle poaching, not roasting: butter the tray and cover with buttered paper. Ranhofer gives no oven temperature; a low oven is what is wanted, and the minion fillets need only a few minutes. The larger fillets he poaches in butter and lemon juice rather than in the oven. Either way, cook to 165F at the centre: chicken that will be eaten cold must be fully cooked before it goes under the weight, because it never sees heat again.
Under a light weightA small board or plate on top while the meat chills compresses it so it slices and pares cleanly into the half-heart shape. Chill it fully, several hours, before you attempt any trimming or glazing.
CornetA paper piping cone. A small plain piping tip does the same job; the foie gras puree should be soft enough to push but firm enough not to slump.
Channeled mushroom (No. 118)A button mushroom cap cut in shallow curved flutes with a paring knife, then cooked in water with lemon juice and a little butter to keep it white. Ranhofer's whiteness depends on the acid and on not letting it colour.
Favor frills and croutonsThe frills are the paper cuffs once slipped over cutlet bones — purely ornamental here. "Croutons" in the cold service usually means shaped pieces of firm aspic, not fried bread; cut them in triangles or crescents from a tray of set jelly.
Vinaigrette mayonnaiseMayonnaise let down with vinegar to a pourable, sharper sauce. Made with raw yolks in the original; use pasteurised egg or a good bought mayonnaise as the base if it will sit out on a buffet.
YieldTwelve large fillets and twelve minions serve twelve as a cold course. All the assembly should be done the day of service and the dish kept refrigerated until it goes to the table — aspic softens quickly in a warm room.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of what he cooked in three decades at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to the section he called the Cold Service — the glazed, moulded, mirror-bright platters that stood on a buffet table and were meant to be looked at as much as eaten. Names like à la Mirebel were the house currency of that kind of cooking: a garnish and a shape fixed by convention, often honouring a patron, a place or a colleague, and the parenthetical "Leverrier" is another such name, given without explanation. The whole method — poach, press cold, pare to a shape, glaze in aspic, inlay with black truffle and scarlet tongue for contrast — is the nineteenth-century garde-manger's craft in miniature, and it survived in professional kitchens and competition work long after home cooks stopped clarifying their own jelly.