No. 657

Chipolata Garnishing

Garniture a la Chipolata

This garnishing is composed of eighteen small whole carrots or else cut into balls and glazed, eighteen small glazed onions, eighteen cooked mushrooms, fluted (No. 118) eighteen whole chestnuts moistened with broth and cooked until they fall to a glaze, and small broiled Chipolata sausages (No. 754). Set these various garnishings into a sautoire, and pour over when ready to serve some espagnole sauce (No. 414) reduced with Madeira wine, add half a pound of half inch squares of salt pork, fried in butter and cooked in consomme; arrange the garnishing in clusters for removes, or mingled for entrees.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a composed garnish rather than a standalone dish — five separately cooked elements bound at the last moment in a Madeira-reduced espagnole. The work is in the timing, not the technique.

Cook every element separatelyThe hinge of the recipe is that nothing is stewed together. Carrots, onions, mushrooms, chestnuts, sausages and pork lardons are each brought to doneness on their own and only combined in the sautoire when the sauce goes over. Cook them as one pot and the chestnuts collapse while the carrots are still hard.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep — a modern 10–12 inch saute pan or sauteuse does the job. Here the recipe uses it only to hold the already-cooked garnishes while the sauce is poured over at serving time.
Espagnole and MadeiraNo. 414 is the book's espagnole, the classic long-cooked brown sauce. A well-reduced veal or beef demi-glace is the practical substitute; the recipe says only to reduce it with Madeira, so a dry style (Sercial or Verdelho) rather than a sweet one is the safer choice, reduced until it coats a spoon.
"Cooked until they fall to a glaze"The chestnuts are simmered in broth until the liquid has almost entirely evaporated and what remains films them in a shining coat. Peeled vacuum-packed chestnuts work; they are fragile, so keep the simmer barely moving and turn them with a spoon, not a whisk.
Salt porkHalf a pound of half-inch cubes, fried in butter and then simmered in consomme, is a lardon garnish. Modern salt pork is often very salty — blanch the cubes in water for a few minutes first, or use unsmoked pancetta, and taste the sauce before adding any salt at all.
Chipolata sausagesThe name here means small, thin fresh sausages, not the seasoned British breakfast chipolata specifically. Any fine-textured fresh pork sausage in a narrow casing will do; broil or pan-brown them and cut into short lengths if they are long.
Fluted mushroomsNo. 118 is the book's cross-reference for fluting, the decorative cut worked into the mushroom cap. It is purely visual and can be skipped; small button mushrooms turned in butter and a little lemon serve the same purpose.
Removes and entreesRanhofer's distinction is presentational, and it is the recipe's own: for a remove the garnishes are set around the dish in separate clusters, one kind to a heap; for entrees they are mingled together. The recipe gives no yield beyond eighteen of each element.

A Little History

Chipolata garnish belongs to the codified vocabulary of nineteenth-century French service, where a named garniture told the kitchen exactly which elements went on the platter — glazed root vegetables, glazed onions, mushrooms, chestnuts, small sausages and pork lardons in a Madeira-lifted brown sauce, and nothing else. The name is generally traced to the Italian cipollata, from cipolla, onion, which explains the glazed onions at its core even though the little sausages have since taken the word over in English. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 and set garnishes like this one in their own numbered section so that a recipe elsewhere in the book could simply call for No. 657 and be understood. It is a cold-weather garnish, built on chestnuts and salt pork, and it was typically sent out with braised beef, veal, turkey or game birds.