No. 2544

Small "pains" of Chicken a la Freycinet

Petits Pains de Poulet a la Freycinet

Have a baking tin with a raised border an inch and a half high; range on it some timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), and surround them with finely chopped ice; pour into the bottom of each mold some jelly to an eighth of an inch in thickness and on top set a round slice of truffle a quarter of an inch narrower than the diameter of the bottom mold; decorate the sides with fanciful cuts of truffles or egg-white dipped in half-set jelly; coat over the interior of the mold or else brush it with a layer of the jelly and fill it up with the following preparation: Pound half a pound of the white meat of a braised and cold chicken to a pulp, after removing the skin, fat and bones; add to it half a pint of veloute sauce (No. 415) well reduced with mushroom essence (No. 392) and a pint of jelly (No. 103); pass the whole through a tammy into a thin metal bowl and lay it on ice; incorporate and mix well with it the same quantity of whipped cream, drained for two hours on a sieve. Fill the molds half full and place in the center a ball of foies-gras taken from a terrine with a round five-eighths of an inch vegetable spoon dipped in hot water; finish filling up with the preparation, smooth the tops and let get thoroughly cold. Unmold the timbales and dress them in a circle on a cut-out rice socle two inches high by eight inches in diameter; place in the center of the socle a sloping support, having it three inches high and five inches in circumference at the base and two inches in circumference on the top; on this top fasten a stearine cup, filling it with very small black and glazed truffles.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A cold chicken mousse set in jelly-lined molds, built for a buffet table rather than a plate. Everything hinges on temperature: the mousse base must be cool and just beginning to thicken when the whipped cream goes in, or the cream deflates and the mixture separates in the mold.

The cross-referencesNo. 415 is velouté, No. 392 mushroom essence (a strong reduction of mushroom trimmings), No. 103 is aspic jelly. In a modern kitchen: a well-reduced velouté made with chicken stock, a concentrated mushroom stock reduction, and a clear chicken aspic set with gelatin.
Pass through a tammyA tammy is a fine woven cloth the purée was forced through with a wooden pestle. A food processor followed by a drum sieve or fine chinois gives the same result with far less labor; the smoothness is not optional, since any fiber shows in a molded mousse.
ProportionsHalf a pound of cooked white meat, a cup of reduced velouté, two cups of jelly, then an equal quantity of whipped cream. Ranhofer does not say what 'the same quantity' is measured against; if it means the volume of the strained base, that works out to roughly a quart of whipped cream. Measure the base after straining rather than guessing.
Drained whipped creamTwo hours on a sieve removes the loose liquid that would otherwise thin the mousse and weep in the mold. Whip to soft peaks only; stiff cream folds into a chilled gelatin base in lumps.
Chopped ice around the moldsThis is the working method, not decoration. The jelly lining must set on contact and the mousse must chill from the outside in. An ice bath in a sheet pan does exactly this; a refrigerator is slower but workable if you let each jelly layer set fully before the next step.
Foie grasTerrine foie gras scooped with a small melon baller, five-eighths of an inch across. Warm the baller in hot water between scoops so the balls release cleanly. A mousse de foie gras is a reasonable substitute and easier to portion.
The socle and stearine cupNeither is meant to be eaten. A socle was a carved base of pressed rice, tallow or wax; stearine is a hard fat used for display pieces. Both were presentation furniture in a nineteenth-century buffet and are simply omitted today, or replaced with a chilled platter.
Yield and holdingHolding -- This is a raw-cream, low-acid preparation held cold: keep it refrigerated until service and do not let it stand out on a table for more than a couple of hours.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a chapter devoted entirely to garnishings for cold dishes — the architecture of the nineteenth-century buffet, where food was mounted on carved bases and crowned with decorative cups that no one ate. Pain simply means loaf, used in French cookery for a forcemeat or mousse set firm enough to slice or unmold. The technique here — pounded cooked meat, a reduced sauce, aspic and whipped cream, all worked over ice — is essentially that of a modern cold mousse, and such moulded cold dishes were show-piece preparations of the period. Dishes styled à la Freycinet are generally traced to the French Freycinet family, most often the navigator Louis de Freycinet or the statesman Charles de Freycinet, though Ranhofer offers no explanation and such names were attached freely by chefs of the era.