No. 2468

Chickens Sauted a la Sherman

Poulets Sautes a la Sherman

Incrust a fancy border mold in chopped ice, having it decorated with truffles and egg-white; coat the decoration with a thick layer of jelly and fill the center with slices of tongue, mushrooms, ham and truffles; pour the sauce obtained from the chicken over, and let get cold, then mask with a thick layer of jelly to finish filling the mold; have this get quite hard. Cut up four young chickens, each weighing a pound and a half, they must be well drawn, singed and cleaned; take four pieces from each, namely, two wings and two legs, pare and saute in butter to a fine color; drain off the butter when done and detach the glaze with a little Madeira wine and espagnole sauce (No. 414); when the whole is reduced to perfection mix in an ounce of isinglass dissolved in a little broth (No. 194a); this sauce when cold should be of the consistency of a lightly thickened chaudfroid. Take out the chickens, strain the sauce through a tammy, remove a part of it, and into it mix some unsmoked red beef tongue, mushrooms, truffles and lean cooked ham, all cut in eighth of an inch thick by one and a quarter to one and a half inches in diameter slices, adding the chicken to the remainder of the sauce. Unmold the border, and when the chicken has cooled in its sauce dress it inside the border, and finish covering with the nearly cold sauce. Garnish around with a border of jelly Croutons (No. 2442). Keep the dish in the ice-box, and cover entirely with the nearly cold jelly applied with a brush. Decorate with fancy paper frills (No. 10), then serve.

← No. 2467 Chicken Fricassee-Chaudfroid The Cold Service No. 2469 Chicken Roasted with Jelly, Cut Up and Garni →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a chaud-froid: cooked chicken glazed in a gelatine-fortified brown sauce and set inside a decorated aspic border. Everything hinges on temperature control, so read the whole method before you begin and have the jelly, the sauce and the chilled mold all going at once.

The hinge: sauce temperatureThe sauce must be applied when it is on the point of setting -- thick enough to cling, still fluid enough to flow. Too warm and it runs off the chicken in streaks; too cold and it sets in lumps on the spoon. Work over a bowl of cool water and stir constantly.
Chopped ice instead of refrigerationRanhofer sets his border mold by packing it in chopped ice, and holds the finished dish in the ice-box. A freezer for the initial set and a refrigerator for the layered filling do the same work faster, though the mold still wants to be genuinely cold before the first jelly goes in.
IsinglassIsinglass is a gelatine made from fish swim bladders. Powdered or leaf gelatine replaces it, but the setting strength is not equivalent and Ranhofer gives no bloom rating, so the one ounce here cannot be converted honestly. Test a spoonful of the finished sauce on a cold plate and adjust before you commit.
EspagnoleSauce espagnole (No. 414 in the book) is a brown veal stock thickened with dark roux and cooked down for hours. A good reduced brown stock or a well-made demi-glace stands in; a thin commercial gravy will not, since the finished glaze needs body and gloss of its own.
TammyA tammy is a worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people to force sauce through. Fine chinois lined with a doubled layer of damp muslin gives the same clarity, which matters here because any speck shows through a clear glaze.
The chickensFour birds of a pound and a half each yield sixteen pieces: two wings and two legs from each. The recipe does not say what becomes of the remaining carcasses. Modern birds run considerably larger, so fewer birds jointed the same way will give fewer and bigger pieces than Ranhofer intended.
Unsmoked red tongueThe colour is the point: cured but unsmoked beef tongue is deep pink and slices cleanly, providing the red against the black truffle and pale mushroom. Smoked tongue overpowers the mild chaud-froid sauce. Pickled tongue from a deli, rinsed and cooled, is the closest thing now sold.
Yield and holdingThe book gives no yield; sixteen pieces would serve roughly eight as a cold course. Assemble it the day of service and keep it refrigerated until the last moment -- aspic weeps and clouds if it sits, and the glaze dulls once condensation forms on it.

A Little History

Chaud-froid -- literally "hot-cold" -- is the high point of nineteenth-century cold cookery: a dish cooked hot, then sauced with a gelatine-set version of the same sauce and served cold, so that the flavour of a kitchen sauce survives on a buffet table. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, filled the Cold Service chapters of The Epicurean (1894) with these constructions because they were what a great restaurant sent out for balls, banquets and late suppers, where dozens of plates had to look identical and hold for an hour. Some of the garnish names in the book are honorifics for patrons and public figures, and a dish called "a la Sherman" in New York in the 1890s is generally taken to nod to General William Tecumseh Sherman, who lived in the city in his last years and died there in 1891 -- though Ranhofer, who rarely explained his dedications, does not say so. What the recipe really documents is a kitchen with an unlimited supply of ice, a brigade to chop it, and the labour to decorate a mold with truffle cut-outs and egg white before any food went near it.