No. 2485a

Galantine of Chicken

Galantine de Poulet

Singe one large chicken, suppress the neck and drumsticks, also the pinion bones; split it in two down the back and bone it entirely. Spread the chicken out on a table, remove part of the breast meats and lay them on the skin where there is no meat. Also remove the meat from the legs, suppress the sinews and chop them up and place in a vessel; also chop up three-quarters of a pound of lean veal and an equal amount of fresh fat pork and add it to the legs; add a quarter of a pound of blanched fat pork, cut in half-inch squares, and an equal quantity of cooked red beef tongue; add a few quartered truffles and a few peeled pistachios; season and pour over a few spoonfuls of Madeira wine. Season the inside of the chicken, fill it with the contents of the bowl, alternating with the forcemeat, then roll the boned chicken into an oblong shape, sew it up and wrap it in a cloth, tightening it well, then tie it at the two ends and in the center. Place it in a long saucepan with the broken-up bones and two or three calves' feet; moisten liberally with stock (No. 194a) and boil while skimming; cook the boned chicken slowly for an hour and a half, then drain; ten minutes later unwrap, remove the thread and wrap it up once more in the same cloth, after it has been well washed, trying it this time with five rows of string-two at the ends, one in the center, and two between; let cool off under a light weight for six hours. After it is finally unwrapped, pare and glaze with white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596) so as to be able to decorate with truffles; cool and cover with a layer of partly cold jelly, dress on a small rice or hominy socle (Fig. 9a), and surround with chopped jelly and croutons (No. 2442) prepared with the galantine stock itself.

← No. 2484 Foies-Gras in Cradle, to Be Cut in Slices The Cold Service No. 2485b Truffle Decorations →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full galantine in the Delmonico manner: a boned chicken stuffed with its own dark meat, veal, pork fat, tongue and truffles, poached in a gelatinous stock, pressed, and finished cold under chaudfroid and aspic. The work is in the boning and the wrapping; the cooking is straightforward.

Ranhofer's vocabulary"Suppress" means remove and discard (or set aside for the stock). "Singe" refers to burning off pinfeathers over a flame, unnecessary on a modern supermarket bird. "Pare" at the end means trim the chilled roll flat and tidy before glazing.
The hinge: wrapping and re-wrappingThe roll is wrapped tight and tied at three points (both ends and the center) for cooking, then unwrapped ten minutes after draining and re-rolled in the same, washed cloth with five ties -- two at the ends, one in the center, two between. The second wrap tightens up the slack left as the roll shrinks in cooking, and is what gives a dense, sliceable galantine. Use unbleached muslin or several layers of cheesecloth.
QuantitiesFor one large chicken (4-5 lb): 12 oz lean veal, 12 oz fresh fat pork (unsalted back fat, not bacon), 4 oz blanched fat pork in half-inch dice, 4 oz cooked beef tongue in the same dice. Fresh pork fatback is a butcher order in most places; ground pork shoulder with a high fat content is the usual substitute, though it binds less silkily.
"Alternating with the forcemeat"The wording is ambiguous: it may point to a separate quenelle-type forcemeat kept on hand, or simply to the chopped leg-veal-pork mixture itself, layered against the diced garnish. If you want the layered effect, pass half the veal and fat pork through a fine grind or a food processor with a little cream or egg white to make a smooth binder, and layer it with the coarser diced mixture.
Calves' feetThey supply the gelatin for both the poaching liquid and the finishing jelly. Pig's trotters do the same job and are easier to find; failing that, reinforce a good stock with powdered gelatin, roughly 1 oz per quart for a jelly firm enough to coat.
Cooking and donenessAn hour and a half at a bare simmer suits a roll of this size, but judge it by internal temperature rather than the clock: 165F at the center, taken through the cloth. The mixture contains raw pork and veal, so undercooking is not an option.
CoolingPress under a light weight, but do it in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Six hours at room temperature in a large mass of cooked meat is exactly the window in which spoilage organisms take hold. Overnight in the cold is better still, and slices more cleanly.
Chaudfroid and the socleChaudfroid (his No. 596) is a béchamel or velouté fortified with aspic, spooned over the cold galantine at the point where it is thick but still flowing. The rice or hominy "socle" is a decorative pedestal of stiff cooked grain, a banquet-display convention with no bearing on flavor; a plain chilled platter serves as well.
YieldA galantine from one large chicken will serve a buffet course for ten or more, depending on how thinly it is sliced. It keeps three or four days refrigerated, tightly wrapped.

A Little History

The galantine belongs to the cold buffet of the grand French kitchen, where boning, stuffing and pressing a bird into a uniform cylinder existed largely so that it could be sliced into perfect medallions and displayed under glossy aspic. The name is generally traced to the Old French galatine, a jellied sauce, and by the nineteenth century it had come to mean the pressed forcemeat roll itself, served cold with its own jelly. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that restaurant's repertoire, and the cold service section is where its display cookery is most visible: chaudfroid coatings, truffle cut-outs, chopped jelly, croutons of aspic and pedestals of molded rice. Truffles, pistachios and beef tongue in the same forcemeat mark this as banquet food, and the cross-references to numbered sauces and stocks show the book for what it is—not a household manual but a professional brigade's system written down.