No. 410

Chicken Bechamel

Bechamel de Volaille

Lift the breasts from two chickens, bone the rest of them and cut the meats into three-eighth inch squares; cut up also one pound of lean veal the same size. Put half a pound of butter into a saucepan with four ounces of onions cut into three-sixteenth inch squares; fry slowly without letting them attain a color, then add the chicken and veal, and when all are well fried, throw in half a pound of flour; stir well and let the flour cook for a few minutes, then moisten with four quarts of chicken bouillon (No. 188); season with salt, mignonette, a bunch of parsley garnished with two bay leaves and as much thyme, then let boil and simmer for one hour and a half, skim off the fat and scum carefully. Strain the bechamel through a fine sieve and then a tammy, and, to reduce it, add one quart of cream, and when the sauce covers the spoon, pass again through the tammy into a vessel; stir from time to time until it gets cold.

← No. 409 Bechamel Sauce Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 411 Lean Bechamel with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a heavily enriched velouté rather than a milk-based béchamel, built on chicken and veal that are cooked into the roux and then strained out. Ranhofer's quantities are for a hotel kitchen; almost everyone will want to divide by four.

Scale it downAs written this yields roughly three quarts of finished sauce from four quarts of bouillon plus a quart of cream. Quartering everything gives about 1.5 pints, which is a generous amount for a home dish.
The meat is a flavouring, not an ingredientThe diced chicken and veal are fried in the butter, simmered in the roux-thickened stock, and then discarded at the straining. Lift the breasts first as instructed and keep them for another dish; they would be wasted here.
MignonetteMignonette (poivre mignonnette) is coarsely cracked white or black peppercorns. Because the sauce is strained, coarse cracked pepper is right; ground pepper would cloud it.
Chicken bouillon No. 188The cross-reference is to Ranhofer's own chicken bouillon. Use a good unsalted homemade chicken stock; commercial broth is salty and will concentrate badly during the cream reduction.
Butter and flourHalf a pound of each per four quarts of liquid is a lighter roux than the ratio suggests, since the flour also has several pounds of meat and onion to coat. Cook the flour a few minutes without colour, or the finished sauce will taste raw and pasty.
The tammyA tammy was a fine worsted cloth through which two cooks twisted the sauce to force it smooth. A fine chinois followed by a pass through damp muslin, or simply a fine sieve pressed with a ladle, does the same work.
"Covers the spoon"This is nappe: the sauce coats the back of a spoon and a finger drawn through leaves a clean track. Reduce over moderate heat and stir, and expect to lose a fair volume once the cream goes in.
CoolingStirring as it cools is not fussiness. A sauce this rich in butter and flour forms a skin and can separate at the surface; stir every few minutes until cold, then refrigerate and use within three or four days.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and the Stocks, Essences and Auxiliaries section is the engine room of that kitchen: mother sauces made in gallon batches, cooled, and drawn on for days of service. The name béchamel is generally traced to Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward at the court of Louis XIV, though the association is traditional and the sauce almost certainly predates him. By the nineteenth century French practice used the word loosely for any white sauce built on a pale roux, and Carême's codification into a milk-based béchamel and a stock-based velouté was still competing with older usage. Ranhofer's bechamel de volaille sits squarely in that older camp: white, but bound with chicken bouillon, deepened with veal, and finished with cream at the end rather than begun with milk. It would have gone into chicken croquettes, vol-au-vents, timbales and any dish on his menus marked à la crème.