No. 2681

Artichoke Bottoms a la Soubise

Fonds d'Artichauts a la Soubise

Prepare a soubise puree (No. 723). Select some equal-sized cooked artichoke bottoms, drain and wipe them on a cloth; cover the hollow side with a part of the soubise puree (No. 723) and let it get cold, then over this lay a thin layer of delicate raw chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89); besprinkle with bread-crumbs, and brush over with butter. Range these artichoke bottoms in a sautoir with some good gravy (No. 404), and heat them well while browning slightly.

← No. 2680 Artichoke Bottoms a la Mornay Artichokes & Asparagus No. 2682 Artichoke Bottoms a la Villars →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A garnish dish from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system, where half the recipe lives in four other numbered entries. Here is what those numbers stand for and what the method actually asks of you.

Soubise (No. 723)A thick onion purée: onions blanched, stewed slowly in butter without colour, bound with rice or a heavy béchamel, then sieved. It must be stiff enough to hold a shape in the artichoke cup, closer to a paste than a sauce.
Quenelle forcemeat (No. 89)Raw chicken breast pounded and sieved, worked with panada and butter or cream over ice into a smooth mousseline. A food processor does the pounding, but keep everything cold or the emulsion breaks and the layer weeps fat as it heats.
Let it get cold — the hingeThe soubise layer is chilled deliberately so the soft forcemeat can be spread over it without the two merging. Skip the chilling and you get one muddy layer that slumps in the pan.
Artichoke bottomsThe recipe takes the bottoms as already cooked; period practice was fresh globe artichokes trimmed to the fond and simmered in an acidulated, floured water (a blanc) to keep them pale. Frozen bottoms are the practical substitute; jarred ones in brine need rinsing and thorough drying, since surface water will loosen the puree.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan. The gravy goes in the pan around the bases, not over them, so the crumbed tops stay dry enough to brown.
Good gravy (No. 404)In this book that means a reduced brown stock or jus rather than a flour-thickened pan gravy. A well-reduced veal or chicken jus is the closest modern equivalent; a few tablespoons is enough.
Heating and browningThe recipe keeps everything in the sautoir, heating the bases through in the gravy while the crumbed tops take a little colour; a hot oven or a moment under a broiler will do the same job. The forcemeat is raw chicken, so heat until the centre of the layer reaches 165F rather than going by appearance.
YieldNo quantity is given because these were built to order as a garnish. Figure one or two bottoms per person alongside a roast; the quantity of soubise and forcemeat per bottom is left to the cook.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working system committed to print — nearly 3,500 numbered entries that refer to one another rather than repeat themselves, exactly as a brigade would work from a set of standing preparations. Soubise takes its name from the eighteenth-century French Prince de Soubise, or more probably his kitchen; the attribution is traditional and the onion purée itself long predates the label. An artichoke bottom filled, capped with forcemeat, crumbed and glazed is a garnish in the strict sense of the period: it did not go out alone but was arranged around a saddle of lamb or a poultry entrée, and the numbered variations on either side of this one — Mornay, Villars — show how a single prepared fond could be sent out a dozen different ways from the same larder.