No. 641

Barley a la Reine Garnishing

Garniture d'Orge a la Reine

Wash in several waters four ounces of pearl barley; cook it in salted water for three hours until thoroughly done, and it crushes easily when pressed between the fingers; drain and let it simmer in a little good, fresh cream. Just when ready to serve, stir in an equal quantity of chicken puree (No. 713) with almond milk (No. 4), and with this garnish some croustades (hollow tartlets made of fine paste (No. 135) rolled out very thin).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A component recipe from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system: barley cooked to collapse, bound with cream and chicken puree, spooned into pastry shells. Two of the three elements live elsewhere in the book, so read it as an assembly instruction.

The hingeThe barley must be soft enough to crush between finger and thumb before the cream goes in. Grains still holding their shape will stay gritty inside the finished garnish no matter how long they sit in cream.
Three hours is no longer rightThree hours is longer than modern pearl barley needs — the grain sold today is more thoroughly pearled and generally reaches the crushable stage inside an hour of simmering; start checking at about 30 minutes and judge by texture, not the clock.
QuantitiesFour ounces of dry pearl barley is a scant two-thirds of a cup and swells to roughly 2 cups cooked. The text does not say what "an equal quantity" of chicken puree is measured against; read as equal to the creamed barley rather than the dry weight, that is about 2 cups of puree, which makes a loose, spoonable filling.
Almond milk here is not the carton kindRanhofer's No. 4 is almonds pounded with water and strained, a thick, rich liquid. Commercial almond beverage is mostly water with stabilisers and will thin the puree rather than enrich it.
Chicken pureeNo. 713 is poached white meat pounded to a paste and worked with a velouty or cream sauce. Poached breast blitzed with a little reduced chicken stock and cream gets you to the same place; keep it thick, as the barley is already wet.
Do not let it boil after the puree goes inThe instruction "just when ready to serve" is doing real work. A puree of pounded chicken bound with cream will granulate and weep if held over heat; combine off the flame and fill immediately.
CroustadesNo. 135 is the book's fine paste for these shells. Roll thin and line small tartlet tins. The original gives no oven setting; blind bake in a hot modern oven (around 400F) until fully coloured and dry, since the filling is wet and a pale shell will soften within minutes of being filled.
YieldEnough to fill roughly two dozen small tartlet shells, which in Ranhofer's usage garnish a platter rather than serve as a course on their own.

A Little History

A la reine in nineteenth-century French kitchen language signals chicken, usually white meat pounded or pureed and enriched with cream -- the same convention behind potage a la reine, a chicken cream soup generally traced back to the sixteenth-century French court and often said to have been named for Marguerite de Valois. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system rather than a book of standalone dishes, which is why this entry sits in a chapter of garnishings and points outward to three other numbered recipes. The almond milk is the oldest thing here: pounded almond liquid was a staple thickener and enricher in European cooking from the medieval period onward, valued on fast days when dairy was forbidden, and it survived into the grand nineteenth-century repertoire as a way of adding body and a faint sweetness to pale sauces without the weight of more cream.