No. 60

To Prepare and Make Forcemeats and to Rectify Them

Pour Preparer et Faire les Farces et les Rectifier

Chicken.—Use only the lean and well pared meats of poultry or game, some panada, fresh butter, or cooked and cold veal udder, raw egg-yolks or else the whites, or sometimes whole eggs, salt and spices, also cold sauces or else raw cream. Pass the meat once or twice through a machine to remove the nerves (Fig. 47); afterward pound it to a pulp so it can readily pass through a metal sieve fitting on to the mortar (Fig. 48); pound the meat once more, then add the panada, the butter or udder, continuing to pound all the time, and then add the eggs singly without ceasing to pound and the seasonings; pass through a strong hair sieve. Put this into a thin tin vessel, set it on ice and stir for a few moments with a spoon in order to have it perfectly smooth, keep in a cool place until needed.

Game.—To make game quenelle forcemeat, proceed the same as for the chicken; to have it delicate, use brown sauce or melted meat glaze, and pass the meat once more after all the ingredients are mixed in. For this it requires a strong hair sieve, or one of fine tinned wire; stand this sieve on a round dish, slightly larger than itself, so it can receive the forcemeat as it falls through; put only a small quantity on the sieve at the time; press it forcibly with a large wooden spoon to have it pass through rapidly, and when all is finished, place it in a tin vessel and stir it for a few moments with a spoon to render it smooth and keep it in a cool place until needed.

To Rectify Forcemeats.—Try a little piece, formed into a half inch ball, in boiling water or in the oven, and if too consistent add some cream or veloute, for white forcemeats, and espagnole or melted glaze for brown game. If too weak, a little pounded panada is to be added, mixing it in gradually with some egg-yolks, whites or whole eggs.

← No. 59 Forcemeats; Remarks on Elementary Methods No. 61 To Prepare Bread Stuffing, American and Engl →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is Ranhofer's base method for quenelle forcemeat rather than a single dish, and it assumes a mortar, a tamis and a kitchen full of standing sauces. The technique translates well to a food processor provided one rule is respected.

Keep it cold, alwaysThe hinge of the whole method is temperature. Fat and egg emulsified into pounded meat will break and weep if the mixture warms; chill the bowl, the blade and the meat, and work in short bursts, returning the mixture to the refrigerator if it slackens or looks greasy.
PanadaNot explained at this point in the book: a stiff paste of bread crumb soaked in milk and dried out over heat, or flour cooked into milk or stock, used as a binder. Ranhofer gives his versions separately. It is normally added cold and firm rather than warm, though this recipe does not say so.
Veal udderCooked, cooled and pounded udder was a classic soft fat for white forcemeats and is hard to obtain now. Use the fresh butter the recipe offers as its alternative; the recipe gives no quantities.
Yolks, whites or whole eggsNot interchangeable. Whites tighten and lighten, giving a firmer quenelle that holds its shape in poaching; yolks enrich and soften. Whole eggs sit between the two. Add them one at a time so the mixture never floods.
Machine, mortar and sieveThe three-stage grind, pound and sieve exists to remove sinew and produce an absolutely smooth paste. A food processor plus one pass through a fine drum sieve or a tamis does the same work; skipping the sieve leaves gristle that will be obvious in a poached quenelle.
The sauces called forVelouté is the white stock-based mother sauce, espagnole the brown; meat glaze is stock reduced to a syrup. Any good reduced stock, or a spoonful of cream for white forcemeats, will loosen the paste in the same way.
The test quenelleThe rectifying step is the most useful part of the recipe and is still standard practice. Poach a half-inch ball in barely simmering salted water for two or three minutes, then taste for seasoning and judge the texture before committing the batch.
Poach, do not boilRanhofer says boiling water for the test, but finished quenelles want water or stock held just below a simmer, around 175-180F. At a rolling boil they swell, burst and go coarse.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years, in two separate stints, as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the Elementary Methods section is essentially the professional French repertoire set down for an American kitchen brigade. Forcemeat of this kind, pounded to a paste and lightened with panada and fat, is the foundation of the nineteenth-century garnish system: quenelles for consomm és chauds, stuffings for boned birds. The instruction to sieve, then sieve again, and the little test ball weighed against cream or espagnole, describe a kitchen where labour was cheap and consistency was everything. Veal udder, called for here as a neutral soft fat, was standard in French kitchens of the period and is now largely absent from Anglophone cooking, though just when it fell away is not easily pinned down.