No. 389

Game Essence

Essence de Gibier

Have two pounds of young rabbit and the same quantity of raw pheasant, and put them into a saucepan with two chopped shallots, two ounces of mushrooms and two ounces of carrots, the mushrooms and carrots being either cut in quarter inch squares or minced; a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, a clove of garlic and six cloves. Moisten with one quart of veal blond (No. 423), and half a bottle of white wine, also a quart and a half of broth; boil all slowly, skim and let simmer for one hour, then strain the essence through a silk sieve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a working component rather than a dish: a concentrated game stock Ranhofer used to build sauces, salmis and game garnishes. The instructions are terse because a professional kitchen already had the veal blond simmering.

Never let it boil hardThe hinge is the slow simmer. Once it rolls, albumin and fat emulsify into the liquid and the essence turns cloudy and greasy; it should barely tremble for the full hour, skimmed as scum rises.
Veal blondNo. 423 is Ranhofer's pale veal stock; the name indicates a light-coloured rather than browned stock. A good unsalted white veal or light chicken stock stands in. Do not use a dark brown stock; it will overwhelm the game.
The birds and the rabbitFarmed pheasant and rabbit are both sold now. Ranhofer specifies raw pheasant, and two pounds of each most likely means the jointed animal rather than trimmed fillets; chopping through the joint exposes marrow and connective tissue, which helps in a simmer as short as an hour.
Six cloves and a clove of garlicRead the two "cloves" carefully — six whole clove spice buds, plus one garlic clove. Six is assertive in three quarts of liquid; four is closer to modern taste, and they should come out with the straining.
Half a bottle of white wineTaking a bottle as roughly the modern 750 ml, this is about 1 1/2 cups of dry white — Chablis or another unoaked wine; period bottles varied in capacity. Total liquid comes to about three quarts.
StrainingA silk sieve is the fine-mesh chinois lined with a doubled square of damp muslin. Ladle rather than pour, and do not press the solids through, which reintroduces the cloudiness the slow simmer avoided.
Yield and keepingExpect roughly two to two and a half quarts of thin, aromatic liquid. It is normally reduced further at the point of use; chilled it will set only lightly, and it freezes well in one-cup portions.
SaltNone is called for. The essence is a base for reductions, so use unsalted stock and broth if you can; salting now risks an oversalted sauce later.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its long opening section of stocks and essences is the scaffolding on which the rest of the book stands: hundreds of later recipes simply call for a number from these pages. An essence in this system is not a flavouring extract in the modern sense but a stock made with a heavy proportion of flesh to liquid, intended to be reduced again into sauce. Game was central to American restaurant cooking of the period — wild rabbit, pheasant, grouse and canvasback arrived in quantity at city markets before the game laws of the early twentieth century curtailed commercial hunting — so a house like Delmonico's kept a game essence on hand the way it kept veal blond. The pairing of rabbit with pheasant here is practical rather than fanciful: the rabbit supplies gelatin and body, the bird supplies the aroma.