No. 650

Cepes or Mushrooms Stuffed a la Duxelle, Provencal or Minced with Bechamel Garnishing

Garniture de Cepes ou de Champignons Farcis a la Duxelle, Provencale Eminces a la Bechamel

Remove the stalks from two pounds of young cepes or mushrooms, wash them well and cook them with lemon juice, some butter and salt. (In case no fresh cepes can be obtained then use preserved ones.) For garnishings, the heads alone are employed. Drain them, and fry them in some sweet oil with a finely chopped shallot and a crushed and chopped clove of garlic, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley and a gill of brown espagnole (No. 414), also a tablespoonful of meat glaze (No. 401) and some chopped-up truffles. Cepes or mushrooms are also used as a garnishing when stuffed with a Duxelle (No. 385), thickened with a little raw lamb quenelle forcemeat (No. 92) or else a baked liver forcemeat (No. 64). In both cases they are to be placed in a baking-sheet and sprinkled over with either oil or melted butter, putting them into the oven to bake. Sliced cepes or mushrooms are also to be used as a garnishing, cutting them up finely and sauteing them in butter or oil, then thickened with bechamel (No. 409), reduced with a little meat glaze (No. 401). These minced cepes are served either on hollow crusts or in a vegetable dish.

← No. 649 Cardinal Garnishing Garnishings No. 651 Chambord Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three separate garnishes packed into one entry, all built on the same pre-cooked mushroom caps. Ranhofer assumes you already have espagnole, glaze and duxelles standing by; the work is mostly in those cross-references.

The hinge: cook, drain, then dryThe initial simmer in butter, lemon juice and salt leaves the caps waterlogged, and wet caps will steam rather than fry in the oil. Drain them and blot them dry before they go into the pan, or the sauce will thin out and the garnish will taste boiled.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is a generous amount of espagnole for two pounds of caps, so add it in stages and stop when the mushrooms are glossed rather than swimming.
CepesCèpes are porcini, Boletus edulis. Fresh ones are seasonal and expensive; the "preserved" ones of 1894 were jarred or canned in oil or brine, and today's equivalents are frozen porcini or jarred porcini in oil. Dried porcini, reconstituted, will not hold up as whole stuffed heads but are fine for the minced version, and the soaking liquid is worth reducing into the sauce.
Espagnole and meat glazeNo. 414 is a long-simmered brown sauce and No. 401 is stock reduced to a syrup. A good reduced brown veal or beef stock stands in for both: use it as-is for the espagnole and reduce a few spoonfuls to a sticky glaze for the finish. Bought demi-glace concentrate works, though it is saltier, so hold back on salt earlier.
Duxelle and the forcemeatsNo. 385 is a duxelles: shallots and finely chopped mushroom (the stems you removed will do) cooked down in butter until dry. The lamb quenelle forcemeat and the baked liver forcemeat are there as binders; a couple of tablespoons of raw ground lamb or chicken worked into the duxelle, or a spoonful of chicken-liver pâté, will hold the stuffing in the cap.
Oven heatThe original gives none. Stuffed caps of this size want a hot oven, 400-425F, for 12-15 minutes, long enough to set the forcemeat and brown the top without collapsing the mushroom.
TrufflesChopped fresh truffle was a routine garnish in Ranhofer's kitchen and is not now. Leave it out rather than substituting truffle oil, which reads as perfume against porcini; a little extra glaze does more for the dish.
Hollow crustsFor the minced version, these are croustades: bread cases or baked puff-pastry shells, hollowed and dried out in the oven so they stay crisp under the béchamel.
YieldTwo pounds of caps is a garnish for a large roast or platter; the original gives no yield, but it should stretch to something like eight to twelve plates. Halve it for a household dinner.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the book is built: not as a set of dishes but as a system of interchangeable parts, each numbered and each depending on others. A garnish here is not a sprig on the plate but a substantial component of the service, and the reader is expected to have espagnole, meat glaze, duxelles and two forcemeats already made. The c u00e8pe itself points to the kitchen's French orientation, and Ranhofer takes care to note that preserved ones will do. The provençale treatment, with oil rather than butter, garlic and shallot, is the standard shorthand of nineteenth-century French kitchens for a southern seasoning, and its appearance alongside a béchamel version in the same paragraph is characteristic: Ranhofer catalogues options rather than prescribing one.