No. 2884
Chicken Liver Omelet
Omelette aux Foies de Volaille
A filled rolled omelet from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, written for a kitchen that already had stock reductions standing by. The cross-references are doing most of the work, so the whole thing hinges on what you substitute for them.
- Half-glaze (No. 400)Ranhofer's half-glaze is espagnole sauce reduced with stock until it coats a spoon — what most kitchens now call demi-glace. A few tablespoons of good reduced brown chicken or veal stock, glossy and lightly thickened, does the job. Use it sparingly: the filling should be moist, not soupy, or the omelet will split.
- The Argentine finish (No. 2878)That cross-reference cannot be reconstructed from this page; you need the earlier entry for the finishing method. What this recipe does tell you is that the sauce goes around, not over: cook the eggs quickly over fairly high heat, keep the centre soft, spoon the filling down the middle, roll it over, and pour the remaining sauce around the base.
- Liver size and donenessThree-eighths of an inch is small — about 1 cm dice. Trim the connective tissue and green-tinged spots first. Sauté hot and fast in foaming butter until browned outside and just firm; chicken liver held over heat turns grainy and chalky within a minute or two of overcooking.
- MadeiraA dry or medium-dry Sercial or Verdelho, not the sweet cooking Madeira sold in supermarkets. Add it off the heat, then return the pan to reduce it almost away before the half-glaze goes in — otherwise the filling tastes raw and spirituous.
- Fat and panButter throughout, as written. The original specifies neither egg count nor pan size; a well-seasoned or nonstick 8-inch pan and three eggs makes one omelet, and the filling from about two chicken livers will fill it.
- YieldThe original gives none. As written this serves one as a course, or two as part of a larger meal.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is mentioned in this entry. Season the livers as they saute and the eggs as you beat them; the half-glaze is already salty, so taste before adding more.
Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York across some three decades, in two spells interrupted in the 1870s, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in numbered form — thousands of entries, each assuming the reader has the rest of the book, and a brigade, at hand. That is why an omelet gets three lines: the sauce is No. 400, the technique is No. 2878, and only the filling is new. Omelets aux foies de volaille belong to the long French practice of using organ meats as a garnish rather than a main item; chicken livers were a by-product of the birds being broken down in quantity, and a sauce of Madeira and reduced brown stock was a common way to dignify them. The run of omelet numbers around this one — cheese, clam, hard and soft — shows how many variations a nineteenth-century American luxury restaurant was expected to turn out from the same eggs and pan.