Important: Safety Warning

This page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.

This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.

No. 645

Bretigny Garnishing

Garniture a la Bretigny

Remove the breasts from sixteen reedbirds, roll them in a sauce made with some gravy (No. 404), to which has been added meat glaze (No. 401), the carcasses and a little Madeira wine, the whole allowed to reduce and then strained. Have sixteen pieces of channeled mushrooms (No. 118) cooked in butter, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and chopped truffles; sixteen slices of sweetbread of one ounce each, blanched and sauted in butter and seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped parsley. Sixteen pieces of potato cut into one inch diameter balls, then blanched and sauted in butter. Range the potato balls on the ends of the dish, and place the sweetbreads, mushrooms, and reedbird breasts around in alternate clusters. Serve with this garnishing a separate sauce-boat of Madeira sauce with truffle essence (No. 395).

← No. 644 Bourgeoise Garnishing Garnishings No. 646 Parma Brochettes Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a garnish assembly from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built to be arranged around a larger roast or entrée. It cannot be made today, for one reason that overrides everything else.

Reedbirds are protected"Reedbird" is the market name for the bobolink, a small migratory songbird netted by the barrel in the Atlantic marshes in the nineteenth century. Bobolinks are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its Canadian counterpart; taking, killing, possessing or selling them is a federal offence. No legal source exists, and there is no ortolan-style loophole.
The sauce depends on the carcassesThe reedbird element is not merely decorative. The sixteen carcasses are simmered into the gravy with meat glaze and Madeira to give the coating sauce its character, so removing the birds removes the point of the preparation rather than leaving a workable dish. Anyone wanting a sweetbread-and-mushroom garnish should use a current recipe.
What the cross-references meanThe numbers point to other entries in the same book: No. 404 a gravy, No. 401 a meat glaze (a heavily reduced stock, in the region of today's glace de viande), No. 118 channeled mushrooms, and No. 395 a Madeira sauce finished with truffle essence. What each of those entries actually contains cannot be checked from this page alone.
Scale and intentSixteen of each element makes this a garnish to be ranged around a larger platter, not a standalone dish.
Sweetbreads and blanchingThe one-ounce slices are blanched before sauteing, which firms the gland so it slices and browns cleanly. That step is still standard practice.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its garnish section reads as a catalogue of set pieces a kitchen brigade could assemble on demand; the names, Bretigny among them, are largely French place and family names attached to fixed combinations rather than to any documented origin story. The reedbird is what dates the page most sharply. Bobolinks fattened on wild rice and marsh grasses were shot and netted in large numbers along the Delaware and Chesapeake in late summer, sold cheaply by the dozen, and treated as a delicacy in American hotel dining rooms through the 1880s and 1890s. The Lacey Act of 1900 curbed interstate traffic in illegally taken game, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the trade outright, which is why a recipe of this kind survives only on the page.