No. 2465

Chicken Breasts a la Renaissance

Filets de Poulet a la Renaissance

Pare ten chicken breasts without the minion fillets; beat them thin, then season and poach in clarified butter and the juice of a lemon laid in a sautoir, keeping them rare; drain and range them on a tray, cover with a buttered paper and set a light weight on top until they become cold. Streak the minion fillets with slices of truffles and shape them into rings; place them in a buttered sautoir and cover with buttered paper; poach in a slack oven, drain them, and when cold cover over with half-set jelly. Drain off all the butter from the pared breasts and take them up one by one with a broad fork, dip five of them into a white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596), and range them at once on a tray, keeping them slightly apart, and then put it on the ice to harden the sauce. Dissolve the remainder of the sauce in a bain-marie and add to it a puree of ravigote herbs (No. 623) pounded without any butter, but having two spoonfuls of the cold chaudfroid sauce added; strain and color with a little spinach green (No. 37). Stir this sauce on ice until of the proper thickness, and with it cover the other five fillets, the same as the first ones, and when the sauce has become cold pare off all the superfluous sauce around, then dress all these breasts in a crown-shape on a thick layer of jelly set on the dish. In the center of this crown range a pyramid of large Spanish olives stuffed with a puree of foies-gras mingled with brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594); around dress the streaked minion fillets and in the center of each lay a small round glazed truffle.

← No. 2464 Chicken Fillets a la Mirebel The Cold Service No. 2466 Chicken Breasts a la Gallier →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A cold buffet piece from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built on cross-references to sauces elsewhere in the book. The reason it cannot be reproduced is in the third line of the original.

Why this one failsThe breasts are poached in butter and lemon juice and deliberately "kept rare," then pressed, chilled, coated in aspic-set sauce and held on ice for service. Poultry that never reaches a safe internal temperature carries a real risk of Salmonella and Campylobacter, and nothing later in the method corrects it — the chaudfroid and jelly are applied cold and the dish is eaten cold.
The tenders are no betterThe minion fillets are streaked with truffle, shaped into rings and poached in a slack oven under buttered paper, then sealed under half-set jelly once cold. The recipe gives no doneness cue for them, and encasing lightly cooked poultry in gelatin for cold service does nothing to correct the risk in the breasts.
Aspic and chaudfroid as a holding mediumWhite chaudfroid sauce (No. 596) is a cream-sauce base set with gelatin, and the jelly base a clarified aspic; both are good growth media, and the whole dish is assembled and served cold. Use a current recipe if you want to make a chaudfroid platter.
Minion filletsThe filets mignons of the bird — the small tenderloin strips lying under each breast. Ranhofer removes them at the start and treats them as a separate garnish.
SautoirA shallow, straight-sided pan. Here the fillets sit in a single layer in it under buttered paper.
Slack ovenAn oven past its working heat and falling: the coolest usable stage of a coal range.
Spinach green and ravigoteNo. 37 is a green colouring made from spinach, used for tint; No. 623 is a purée of ravigote herbs, here pounded without butter as the recipe directs. Together they give the second five breasts their green coat against the white of the first five.
ScaleTen breasts, five white and five green, dressed in a crown around a pyramid of stuffed olives: a platter for a formal cold table, not a dinner for four.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold service chapter is the part that looks strangest now: dozens of numbered variations on the same idea of poached poultry masked in chaudfroid and set on aspic, differing mainly in the colour of the coating and the arrangement of the garnish. Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold" — names a sauce made hot and served cold, stiffened with gelatin so it clings in an even, opaque layer; its origin is usually placed in French practice of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, though the usual accounts are traditional rather than documented. In Ranhofer's system a title such as "à la Renaissance" functions largely as a label for a particular garnish combination, here the green ravigote masking, the truffle-streaked rings and the olives stuffed with foie gras.