No. 270

Puree of Chicken a la Reine

Puree de Poulet a la Reine

For Twelve Persons.—Garnish the bottom of a braziere with slices of fat pork, minced carrots and onions, and a bunch of parsley garnished with a little thyme and bay leaf; place on top one chicken, moisten with a pint of broth, and let it reduce slowly but entirely; moisten again with two quarts of broth, let the liquid come to a boil, then skim it off and continue boiling until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Remove all the meat from the chicken without any skin or fat, and pound this with half a pound of very fresh bread-crumbs, season it with salt and nutmeg, then moisten with the stock, rub this through a tammy, and heat it up without boiling, adding to it an almond-milk prepared as follows: Pound one ounce of freshly peeled almonds, add gradually to it one pint of milk and press this forcibly through a napkin. Just when ready to serve, put into the soup three ounces of fine butter, stirring it continually until thoroughly melted. Serve the soup with a garnishing of small quenelles, bead-shaped, of three-sixteenths of an inch in size, made of quenelle and cream forcemeats (Nos. 75, 89), half and half of each, and laid through a cornet on a buttered baking sheet, then poached in boiling water.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's chicken purée is a bread-thickened soup rather than a roux or cream one, which dictates almost everything about how it behaves on the stove. Read the two temperature warnings before you start: the finished soup is never boiled again.

Never let it boil after strainingOnce the pounded chicken and bread are sieved into the stock, the recipe is explicit that it is heated "without boiling." Hold it below a simmer; a bread-and-almond-milk liaison of this kind is generally reckoned to break or turn grainy if boiled.
The braziereA braziere is simply a heavy braising pan with a lid — a Dutch oven does the job. The two-stage moistening is a glaze technique: the first pint of broth reduces to a sticky film on the vegetables and pork, and that film is the flavour base for the two quarts that follow.
Fat porkMost likely fresh pork fatback, though "fat pork" was also used at the period for salt pork. If you are using salt pork, blanch it in fresh water first, or the reduction stage will concentrate the salt.
The chickenThe recipe says only "one chicken." A bird of roughly 4 to 5 lb suits this quantity of broth; cook until the leg meat pulls away easily, as the recipe directs ("until the chicken is thoroughly cooked"). The meat is going through a sieve, so tenderness matters more than presentation.
TammyA tammy was a loosely woven worsted cloth through which the purée was wrung by two people twisting opposite ends. A fine-mesh conical sieve pressed with a ladle, or a food mill followed by a chinois, gives the same result. Pound the meat in a food processor before sieving and the work halves.
Bread-crumbsHalf a pound of "very fresh" crumbs means soft white crumb from an unsweetened loaf, crusts removed — not dry packaged crumbs, which will not swell smoothly and taste toasted.
Almond milkMake it as directed; commercial almond beverage is thin, often sweetened or gummed, and will not enrich the soup in the same way. One ounce of blanched almonds pounded with a pint of milk and wrung through a cloth is quick work, and it is what gives this purée its particular delicacy.
Butter at the endThe recipe adds the three ounces of butter "just when ready to serve," stirred continually until thoroughly melted. Given that the soup is never to boil, keep the heat low or work off the fire while the butter goes in.
The quenelle garnishThree-sixteenths of an inch is roughly 5 mm — beads piped from a paper cornet, as the recipe directs, onto a buttered baking sheet and then poached; the recipe says boiling water, though barely-trembling water treats them more kindly. A minute or two, until they float and firm. They are optional; the soup is complete without them, though it loses its texture contrast.
YieldTwelve small soup-course servings from two quarts of broth plus a pint of almond milk, allowing for reduction — roughly 6 to 7 oz a head, which is a first course, not a meal.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where a formal dinner offered two soups and a diner chose between them. The name à la reine attaches in classical French cookery to dishes built on puréed or minced chicken enriched with cream or almonds; it is generally traced to the queens of the French court, with Marguerite de Valois and Marie de Médicis both named in the tradition, though the attribution is culinary folklore rather than documented fact. What is verifiable is the age of the method: thickening with pounded almonds and fresh bread crumb, rather than flour, is a medieval and early modern European technique — the same one behind blancmange — and it survived into the nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen precisely in these white chicken purées, where a roux would have dulled the colour and the delicacy that the dish was praised for.