No. 341

Pilau, Turkish Style

Pilau a la Turque

Put two knuckles of veal into a saucepan with eight quarts of broth, a few slices of raw ham, one chicken, and a roasted shoulder of lamb; boil up the liquid, skim, and add to it three carrots, two turnips, one celery stalk, six leeks, two onions, and two cloves; continue to boil slowly, till each one of the meats is done, then take them out as fast as cooked; strain the broth, remove all the fat, and clarify it, then reduce it one-quarter. Cut the chicken into small pieces, and put them into the soup; mince the shoulder of lamb, cut the ham into small dice, and after placing the knuckle of veal under a weight to get cool, cut it up into squares, and add all these to the soup, with some salt, red pepper, a slight infusion of saffron, and half a pound of blanched Sultana raisins. Parboil a quarter of a pound of rice for ten minutes in boiling, salted water, drain, and put it into three pints of boiling white broth; at the first boil, remove it from the fire, cover, and finish cooking in a cool oven for twenty-five minutes; when done, put it into the soup and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a hotel kitchen, and the quantities show it: eight quarts of broth plus four separate meats. Everything here scales down cleanly, but the sequence matters more than the amounts.

The hinge: pull each meat as it finishesChicken will be done in under an hour, the veal knuckles need two to three, and the lamb shoulder arrives already roasted and only needs warming through. Leaving them all in until the broth is finished gives you shredded chicken and dry lamb.
ScaleEight quarts of broth with two veal knuckles is banquet quantity, on the order of twenty servings. Cutting it down — one veal knuckle, half a chicken, a few ounces of ham, a cup of leftover roast lamb, two quarts of broth — gives five or six generous bowls, though note this halves the meat while quartering the liquid, so the result is meatier than the original.
"Roasted shoulder of lamb"This is not raw meat going into the pot; it is a cooked joint, and the recipe is a graceful way of using yesterday's roast. Add it late, purely to flavour the broth and to be minced into the finished soup.
Clarifying and reducingChill the strained broth so the fat lifts off in a sheet, then clarify with an egg-white raft if you want the glassy consommé Ranhofer intends. Reducing by a quarter afterwards concentrates it; do the reduction after clarifying, not before, or you tighten the salt too far.
Red pepperIn cookery of this period the term generally means cayenne rather than paprika or a fresh chilli. A pinch, added at the end.
Saffron infusionSteep a good pinch of threads in a few tablespoons of the hot broth for ten minutes and strain the liquid in. A "slight infusion" is meant to tint and perfume, not to dominate — the raisins and saffron together are what make this Turkish in the book's terms.
"A cool oven" for the riceRoughly 250–300F; the period term is only approximate. The rice is parboiled ten minutes, brought to a boil in white broth, then covered and left to absorb in gentle ambient heat for twenty-five minutes. Cook it separately to the end and add at service; rice held in the soup keeps drinking and turns the whole thing to porridge.
SultanasBlanching means a brief plunge in boiling water to plump and clean them. Modern sultanas are oiled and ready to use, so a short soak in hot broth is enough.
White brothAn unbrowned stock — veal or chicken simmered without roasting the bones. Ordinary light chicken stock stands in.'

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter is a tour of the international repertoire a grand American restaurant was expected to command. Pilau — from Persian polow, by way of Turkish pilav — is properly a rice dish rather than a soup, and what Ranhofer has done is translate it into the French service he worked in: the rice cooked apart in the pilaf manner, the meats poached and diced, everything reassembled in a clarified consommé. The saffron, the sultanas and the cayenne are the period's shorthand for the eastern Mediterranean, the same vocabulary that turned up in dishes labelled à la Turque across nineteenth-century French cookbooks.