No. 2756

Mushrooms a la Raynal—Mousserons

Champignons Mousserons a la Raynal

Prepare a foundation paste (No. 135) croustade, having it broad and rather high; place it on a baking sheet and fill it with a preparation made with a pound and a half of mushrooms cooked for five minutes in a little butter and broth (No. 194a); season with salt, then drain; when they are done cut them up finely and add the pieces to a chicken puree (No. 713), having it the consistency of a thick sauce, mixing in some raw egg-yolks. Push the filled croustade into the oven and let cook without browning. Have prepared a dozen mushroom heads, each one an inch and a half in diameter, suppress the stalks, scoop out the inside and chop up the fragments and stalks very fine; fry them in butter until quite dry, add lemon juice and let cool; mix this with the same quantity of chicken forcemeat (No. 86) and chopped parsley, season well and use this to fill the mushroom heads, forming them slightly rounded on top; lay them on a baking pan, scatter bread-crumbs over and pour on some butter; slip a little broth into the bottom and place in the oven for half an hour; dress these mushrooms on top of the croustade and serve.

← No. 2755 Macedoine a la Montigny Mushrooms & Truffles No. 2757 Mushrooms a la Dumas—Oronges →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered cross-reference system, so this reads as an assembly note rather than a recipe. Stripped down, it is a pastry case filled with chopped mushrooms bound in a thick chicken purée, topped with twelve stuffed and gratinated mushroom caps.

The hinge: the yolk-bound filling must set, not scrambleThe chicken purée thickened with raw yolks is a custard by another name. The instruction "without browning" is really an instruction to keep the heat low enough that the filling sets smooth instead of curdling and weeping. The recipe specifies no temperature, so a low-to-moderate oven is an inference rather than Ranhofer's own direction.
Foundation paste (No. 135)This is a cross-reference to one of Ranhofer's foundation pastes, and the book's pastes vary: some are sturdy shaping pastes for stands and socles rather than eating. Worth checking No. 135 before assuming which. If you want the case edible, build it from a sturdy pâte brisée and blind-bake it before filling.
MousseronsThe French mousseron is usually Calocybe gambosa, the St. George's mushroom, a small spring field mushroom with a strong mealy smell. It is not sold commercially in most places. Cultivated white or cremini mushrooms will carry the dish; the heads called for at an inch and a half across are ordinary medium button caps.
Broth No. 194aOne of Ranhofer's plain broths; its exact composition is worth looking up at the cross-reference rather than assumed. A few tablespoons is all the mushrooms need; they release their own liquid within a minute of hitting the butter.
Chicken purée and chicken forcemeatChicken purée and chicken forcemeat -- Two different preparations in the original book, and both should be read at their cross-references rather than guessed at: the purée (No. 713) is called for at the consistency of a thick sauce, while the forcemeat (No. 86) is a pounded chicken forcemeat that firms on cooking. A modern food processor does in a minute what the original expected of a mortar.
The duxelles stepFrying the chopped stalks and scooped-out flesh "until quite dry" is not optional detail. Wet duxelles will slacken the forcemeat and the stuffed caps will slump. Cook until the pan squeaks, then acidulate with lemon off the heat and cool before mixing with the raw forcemeat.
The stuffed capsHalf an hour is long for a button mushroom, but the caps sit in a little broth with butter poured over crumbs, so they are steaming as much as baking. Ranhofer gives no oven temperature; pull them when the forcemeat is firm to the touch and the crumbs are gold.
YieldA pound and a half of mushrooms in the filling and twelve caps on top makes a centrepiece for six to eight as one course of a longer meal.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised less as a cookbook than as a professional reference: over three thousand numbered preparations, each leaning on others by number, so that a single dish quietly assumes you have a chicken purée, a forcemeat and a foundation paste already to hand. The dish is built on the mousseron, a small spring mushroom long gathered in France from pasture and orchard. Naming a dish "à la Raynal" follows the standard nineteenth-century restaurant habit of honouring a patron, a colleague or an occasion, and in most cases the identity behind such a name is now unrecoverable. The construction itself, a tall pastry case crowned with a ring of identical stuffed caps, belongs to the era when a dish was expected to be looked at before it was eaten.