No. 2466

Chicken Breasts a la Gallier

Filets de Poulet a la Gallier

Trim a rice socle eight inches in diameter and two inches high. Remove the sinews well from twelve chicken breasts, suppress the skin and pare nicely, then fry them white in clarified butter and lemon juice; season with salt, drain, and lay them under a light weight; trim them into half-hearts, and split them in two through their thickness; then cover one part of each with foies-gras taken from a terrine, pounded and rubbed through a sieve, and place the other part on top of this, pressing one on the other lightly and evenly. Cover half of these double fillets with a ravigote chaudfroid (No. 595), and when it is cold brush over with partly solidified jelly; decorate the others with truffles, and cover also with partly cold jelly. When cold cut away the surplus of chaudfroid and jelly and ornament the pointed ends with favor frills (No. 10). Dress the fillets in a circle on the socle, intercalating the two kinds, having first one covered with chaudfroid, then one covered with jelly; fill up the inside with some well-seasoned vegetable macedoine (No. 2650) thickened with a little jellied mayonnaise (No. 613); decorate around the socle with chopped jelly and croutons of jelly; on top of the macedoine lay round pieces of glazed black truffle. On the edge of the socle around the fillet have a border of stuffed mushrooms covered with chaudfroid (see No. 2517).

← No. 2465 Chicken Breasts a la Renaissance The Cold Service No. 2467 Chicken Fricassee-Chaudfroid →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a set piece from the cold buffet, and almost all the work happens after the chicken is cooked. Read it as an assembly job: poach-fry the fillets, chill them under weight, then coat, decorate and dress them on a stand.

The hinge: everything must stay coldChaudfroid and aspic only coat cleanly when the fillets are thoroughly chilled and the sauce is at the point of setting — thick enough to cling, loose enough to flow. Work in batches straight from the refrigerator, and return the pieces to the cold between coats rather than letting them sit out on the counter.
"Fry them white"Cook the fillets in clarified butter with lemon juice over gentle heat with no colour at all, as you would for a suprême à blanc. Thin pared cutlets need only 3-4 minutes a side; take them to 165F and no further, since dry meat is unforgiving once it is cold and sliced through its thickness.
Twelve breasts is ambiguousIn classical French usage a filet is one side of the bird, so this most likely means twelve single fillets rather than twelve modern two-lobed breasts. Twelve fillets, each split and reassembled, give twelve garnished pieces — a platter for roughly ten or a dozen, depending on the rest of the buffet.
The rice socleA socle is a decorative base, here a round block eight inches across and two inches high moulded from stiff, starchy cooked rice, trimmed with a knife and used purely as a stand. A chilled round of firm aspic in a cake ring, or a plain platter, does the same job if you are not carving rice.
Foies-gras from a terrineThis means cooked foie gras terrine, pounded smooth and sieved — not raw liver. Any good duck foie gras or a fine mousse de foie de canard works; soften it slightly so it spreads without tearing the thin fillet halves.
Chaudfroid and jellyChaudfroid is a velouté- or mayonnaise-based sauce set with aspic; the ravigote version takes its green herb tint from the herbs. Gelatin strengths vary, so build the aspic at roughly a tablespoon of powdered gelatin per pint of well-flavoured stock and test a spoonful on a cold plate before committing.
Favor frillsThese are the paper cuffs sold for lamb cutlets and crown roasts. They are decoration only, pushed onto the pointed end of each fillet at the last moment so the paper does not dampen.
Truffles and macédoineThe "glazed black truffle" rounds are simply truffle slices brushed with aspic to make them shine; preserved truffle or a good truffle paste will read the same at buffet distance. The macédoine is a fine dice of cooked carrot, turnip, green beans and peas bound with mayonnaise slackened with a little aspic so it holds its shape when the platter is cut into.
Serving windowAssemble no more than a few hours ahead, keep refrigerated, and bring the finished platter out shortly before serving. Aspic weeps and dulls once it warms, and the dish is meant to be looked at before it is eaten.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a chapter of the book devoted entirely to cold work — the chaudfroids, aspics, socles and moulded garnishes that furnished a late-nineteenth-century buffet or ball supper. Chaudfroid means "hot-cold": a sauce made hot, enriched with aspic, and served set and cold, a technique generally traced to French service of the late eighteenth century and refined into a competitive display art by the era of Carême and after. Dishes like this were as much architecture as cookery, built up on a carved rice or fat socle so the fillets stood in a ring above the table. The name "à la Gallier" is one of the many personal dedications scattered through Ranhofer's numbering.