No. 63

Forcemeat of Chicken, Fish or Game with Whipped Cream and Butter

Farce de Volaille, Poisson ou Gibier avec Creme Fouettee et Beurre

Pound half a pound of chicken fillets after passing them twice through the machine (Fig. 47), then press this pulp through a sieve and return it to the mortar to pound once more, mixing in with it little by little, five ounces of butter, one whole egg and four yolks, or instead of the egg and yolks substitute four egg-whites. Season with salt, nutmeg and red pepper, then take out the forcemeat and set it into a thin metal vessel; lay this on the ice, beat up the forcemeat well for a few minutes, incorporating slowly into it the volume of one pint of very firm, well drained whipped cream, one pint of cream before being whipped will produce about three pints after being whipped; use the same preparation for forcemeats of game and fish, increasing or decreasing the panada and eggs according to the consistency of the viands employed.

← No. 62 Chicken or Game Forcemeat Without Panada Elementary Methods No. 64 Chicken Liver, Fine Baking Forcemeat →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is Ranhofer's mousseline forcemeat, the lightest of his farce formulas and the base for quenelles, timbales and stuffed galantines. Everything about it turns on temperature.

Keep it cold, alwaysThe hinge of the recipe is the ice bath. Butter, cream and egg will hold as an emulsion only while the mixture stays near freezing; if it warms above about 45F the fat breaks out and the quenelles poach greasy and grainy. Chill the bowl, the meat and the blade, and work in short bursts.
"The machine (Fig. 47)"A hand-cranked meat grinder. A food processor does the grinding, sieving and pounding in one operation: pulse the chilled fillets to a paste, add the butter and eggs, then press the result through a drum sieve or fine strainer to catch sinew before folding in the cream by hand.
Proportions in modern terms8 oz (225 g) skinless chicken breast, 5 oz (140 g) butter, 1 whole egg plus 4 yolks (or 4 whites), and one pint of whipped cream by volume. By Ranhofer's own reckoning -- a pint of cream making about three pints whipped -- that is only about a third of a pint (roughly 160 ml) of cream before whipping. It is still a great deal of butter and cream against the meat, which is why the finished forcemeat is a mousseline rather than a stuffing.
Yolks or whites, not bothYolks give a richer, softer, more yellow forcemeat; whites alone give a paler, firmer, springier one that holds a moulded shape better. Choose according to whether the farce is to be piped into quenelles or lining a mould.
Red pepperCayenne. A pinch is enough; the point is warmth behind the nutmeg, not heat you can identify.
The panada that isn't thereRanhofer's closing line tells you to adjust "the panada" though this formula contains none, because he is cross-referring to his other farce numbers. For lean white fish, which binds readily, no panada is needed; for game, which is drier and coarser, a spoonful or two of thick bread or flour panada steadies the mixture.
Test before you commitPoach a teaspoon of the finished forcemeat in barely simmering salted water for two or three minutes and taste it. That tells you both the seasoning and whether the bind is right; too soft, add a little egg white, too tight, loosen with a spoonful of unwhipped cream.
Cooking and yieldCooking -- Quenelles shaped from this go into water or stock held at 170-180F, never a rolling boil, which would blow them apart.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) sets out his kitchen as a system: the Elementary Methods section is a numbered library of stocks, farces and garnishes that the later dishes call on by number rather than repeating. Forcemeat lightened with whipped cream is the mousseline, a nineteenth-century French refinement of much older pounded-meat farces, and it depends entirely on ice being cheap and constant in a professional kitchen, which by the 1890s in New York it was. The mortar and drum sieve did what a food processor does now, at the cost of a great deal of a commis cook's morning, and the fineness of the sieving was the measure of the house. Ranhofer's habit of writing one formula and then telling the reader to bend it for game or fish, adjusting panada by feel, assumes a trained brigade rather than a home cook, which is the tone of the book throughout.