No. 279

Puree of Pullet or Guinea Fowl a la Washburn

Puree de Poularde ou Pintade a la Washburn

Roast some small pullets or guinea fowls, remove all the meat, and suppress from this the fat and skin; break up the carcasses and put them into a saucepan with some minced carrots, leeks, a bunch of parsley and bayleaf. Cut half a pound of breast of pork; put two ounces of butter into a saucepan with the pork and fry together for a few minutes, then add the leeks, carrots and bunch of parsley, also the carcasses; moisten with six quarts of beef stock, season with salt, pepper-corns and two cloves, and boil up the liquid, skim off the fat and continue boiling for one hour, then strain through a sieve. Pound the meat taken from the pullets or guinea fowl with twelve hard boiled egg-yolks and two ounces of butter, diluting it with the stock, heat it up and have it boil for a few minutes, season, and stir in four ounces of butter, working it in the soup with a spoon until it is entirely melted, then pour it into the soup tureen and serve the following garnishing separate:

Garnishing.—Saute four ounces of chicken livers; pound and press them forcibly through a sieve, adding four egg-yolks and some cooked fine herbs. With this preparation make small half inch diameter balls, roll them in egg and bread-crumbs, and fry them in clarified butter.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A pounded-meat purée soup of the old school, built in two stages: a strong stock from the roast carcasses, then the picked meat worked smooth with hard-boiled yolks and butter. Ranhofer's quantities are restaurant quantities.

Scale it down firstSix quarts of beef stock plus the birds and half a pound of pork yields something like 20 to 24 servings. Quartering the recipe — 6 cups stock, 3 egg yolks — gives five or six portions and is far easier to manage.
What a pullet isA young hen under a year old, roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb dressed. A supermarket roasting chicken of that weight is the direct substitute. Guinea fowl is sold at better butchers and online, usually 2 to 3 lb, and gives a gamier flavour; the recipe treats the two as interchangeable.
Breast of porkFresh pork belly, not bacon and not cured. If you use bacon or salt pork instead, cut the added salt back sharply, since the stock reduces for an hour.
The hinge: keep the yolk purée below a simmerTwelve hard-boiled yolks plus pounded meat is the whole thickening; there is no flour. Once the purée goes into the stock, hold it just under a boil. "Have it boil for a few minutes" assumes constant stirring; at a hard boil in a thin pan the yolk solids seize and the soup turns grainy.
Finish the butter off the heatThe final four ounces are worked in as an emulsion. Pull the pan off the flame, add the cold butter in pieces, and stir until it disappears. Boiling after this point splits the soup and leaves fat on the surface.
Pounding, without a mortarA food processor does the meat and yolks in a minute; thin with a ladle of hot stock. Ranhofer sieves the liver mixture but does not specify sieving the meat purée; passing it through a fine sieve or chinois gives the smoother result.
The liver garnishFour ounces of chicken livers, sautéed until firm and cooked through, then sieved with four raw yolks and chopped herbs. The mixture is soft; chill it thoroughly before rolling the half-inch balls or they will not hold a crumb coating. Fry in clarified butter at about 350F, a minute or so, until browned and set through.
SeasoningPeppercorns and cloves go into the stock whole and are removed with the straining. Season the finished purée at the end, after the butter, since the reduction concentrates whatever salt went in early.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its odd-sounding suffixes — à la Washburn, à la Benton, à la Condé — are mostly the restaurant's own house names, many of them honouring patrons, public figures or private dinners rather than any older culinary tradition; the practice was standard in nineteenth-century grand cookery and the specific person behind a name like Washburn is generally not recoverable from the book itself. What the recipe does document precisely is a technique now nearly extinct: the purée thickened with pounded flesh and hard-boiled egg yolks, a method that predates the flour-and-cream purées of the twentieth century and is often said to resemble earlier French practice of the kind associated with Carême. Nothing is wasted — the roasted carcasses make the stock, the meat makes the body, and the livers become the fried garnish served separately so it stays crisp.