No. 2703

Brussels Sprouts a la Baroness

Choux de Bruxelles a la Baronne

Clean, prepare and cook the sprouts the same as for sauted (No. 2704); the only difference to be observed is that instead of boiling them entirely have them only three-quarters cooked. Put them into a saucepan with as many chestnuts also three-quarters cooked; moisten with fresh cream, season with salt and nutmeg, and let simmer together until done and the liquid sufficiently reduced.

← No. 2702 Beetroot Fritters a la Dickens; Beetroots wi Cabbages & Greens No. 2704 Brussels Sprouts Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have already read the neighbouring entry, so the whole method here is a cross-reference plus one adjustment. The dish is essentially sprouts and chestnuts finished in cream until the cream clings.

The hinge: three-quarters cookedBoth sprouts and chestnuts must come out of their first cooking still firm, because they finish in the cream and go on cooking there. Sprouts boiled fully soft before the cream stage collapse into mush and shed sulphurous water into the sauce.
What No. 2704 asks forThe sauted recipe covers cleaning and trimming the sprouts and boiling them in salted water; here they are taken only three-quarters of the way. Blanching time depends on size, and they must be drained thoroughly, since wet sprouts will thin the cream and it will never reduce properly.
ChestnutsFresh chestnuts must be scored, roasted or boiled, then peeled of both shell and inner skin while hot. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are an honest substitute here; treat them as already three-quarters done and add them only in the last few minutes so they do not crumble.
"Fresh cream"Heavy or whipping cream, not half-and-half. The cream available to Ranhofer would have been unhomogenised, and the sauce depends on a high fat content to reduce to a glaze rather than curdle. Enough to come roughly halfway up the vegetables, not to cover them.
NutmegGrate it fresh over the pan. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its volatile oils quickly and the seasoning is one of only two in the dish, so it has to carry.
ReductionSimmer uncovered, shaking the pan rather than stirring, until the cream coats the sprouts and no pool remains in the bottom. A lid traps steam and you will never get there.
YieldRanhofer specifies as many chestnuts as sprouts, so the two should be in comparable quantity; roughly 1 1/2 lb sprouts with a similar quantity of peeled chestnuts and about a cup of cream serves six as a side dish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) collects the working repertoire of Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and its numbered, cross-referenced entries were written for professional cooks who already knew the base preparations. The pairing of Brussels sprouts with chestnuts is a standard of French cold-weather cookery, both being autumn and winter produce, and it travelled into American restaurant menus alongside the sprout itself, which is generally said to have been a comparative novelty in the United States at the time. Dish names of the form a la Baronne belong to the nineteenth-century habit of attaching titles of rank to garnishes and preparations; they rarely point to any documented aristocrat, and Ranhofer uses such names freely without explanation.