No. 2684

Artichoke Bottoms Stuffed-Lean

Funds d'Artichauts Fonds d'Artichauts Farcis au Maigre

Pare eight or ten raw artichoke bottoms, blanch them in salted water and cook them in a white stock (No. 182) with aromatic herbs and a little white wine, keeping them rather hard, then drain them on a cloth. Prepare a duxelle (No. 385) composed of chopped onions, shallots, truffles and mushrooms, mingled first with a little smooth cream frangipane panada (No. 120), then with a little sauce; season the preparation and finish it with some raw egg-yolks, chopped parsley and a few spoonfuls of salted anchovy fillets cut in small dice. With this forcemeat cover the artichoke bottoms, smooth and bestrew with bread-crumbs; range them in a small deep baking dish, capable of being placed in the oven, and besprinkle lightly with oil; finish cooking in a slack oven, basting over frequently.

← No. 2683 Artichoke Bottoms Fried Artichokes & Asparagus No. 2685 Artichoke Bottoms with Baked Cauliflower →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with numbered preparations on hand, so most of the work here is in the cross-references. Read them as three components: cooked artichoke bottoms, a duxelles bound with a flour-and-egg panada, and a slow bake.

"Au maigre" is the whole pointMaigre means lean in the Lenten sense: no meat. If you follow the letter of it, the No. 182 white stock should be replaced with a vegetable or light fish stock, which also explains why anchovy supplies the savory depth here instead of ham or veal.
Slack ovenA slack or slow oven is roughly 250-300F. The low heat is there to set the egg yolks in the forcemeat and dry the crumbs without curdling the filling. Frequent basting with the oil keeps the crust from scorching.
Keep the bottoms hardThe instruction to undercook them is the hinge. They finish cooking in the oven under the stuffing, and bottoms cooked to tenderness in the stock will collapse into mush.
Sourcing the bottomsParing eight or ten bottoms from raw globe artichokes wastes most of the vegetable. Frozen artichoke bottoms, thawed, are an honest substitute; jarred ones packed in brine are already soft and will not survive the bake. Rub pared raw bottoms with lemon and hold them in acidulated water or they blacken within minutes.
Frangipane panada (No. 120)Not almond frangipane. In Ranhofer's system it is a thick paste of flour, egg yolks, butter and milk cooked until smooth, used purely as a binder. A stiff bechamel-style panade of the same consistency does the same job; use it sparingly or the duxelles loses its texture.
Duxelles (No. 385)Onion, shallot and mushroom chopped fine and cooked dry, with truffle added. The mixture must be cooked until no moisture weeps out, otherwise the filling slumps off the bottoms in the oven. Truffle is optional in practice; more mushroom, well browned, is the sensible replacement.
SaltSalted anchovy fillets, a seasoned duxelles and salted blanching water stack up quickly. Season the forcemeat after the anchovy goes in, not before, and taste it raw-yolk-free by frying a small spoonful.
YieldEight to ten stuffed bottoms serve four as a first course, or two as a light main with bread. They are best warm rather than hot from the oven.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is essentially the kitchen's own reference system transcribed: thousands of numbered preparations that assume you can turn to No. 120 or No. 385 for the component parts. The au maigre label on this dish points to a long-standing feature of French professional cooking, the parallel repertoire of meatless dishes for Fridays and Lent, where anchovy, mushroom and truffle carried the savory weight normally supplied by meat stock and forcemeat. Artichoke bottoms were a standard luxury garnish in this style of cooking, valued as edible cups: firm enough to hold a stuffing, expensive enough in labor to signal a serious kitchen. That a fast-day dish should still involve truffles and a Delmonico's stockpot says a good deal about how abstinence was observed at the top of the nineteenth-century table.