No. 660

Connetable Garnishing

Garniture Connetable

Prepare sixteen minion fillets of chicken well freed of all sinews and skin; streak eight of them with tongue and dress them in a circle, shaping them around a three-quarter inch column cutter, put them on small square pieces of buttered paper; fill the interiors of each with chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) laid through a pocket, and on top of the forcemeat set small half inch balls of truffles. The other eight minion fillets are to be also laid in a circle on squares of buttered paper, filling the interiors with the same forcemeat as the others, but on the top of each set a stoned olive stuffed with anchovies; place them all on a buttered baking-pan, cover over with a buttered paper, moisten with mushroom essence (No. 392) and poach in a slack oven. Have sixteen small game quenelles made with a teaspoon (No. 155) and laid in a buttered sautoire, after decorating them with pistachio nuts, and poached in boiling salted water. Sixteen escalops of ducks' liver, covered on both sides with a villeroy sauce (No. 560) containing mushrooms and raw fine herbs; let these get cold, then dip them in beaten eggs, and bread-crumbs, and fry them to fine golden color. Garnish the remove with the quenelles, minions and Villeroi ducks' livers. Serve a financiere sauce (No. 464) separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a dish but a garniture: a set of composed items arranged around a large roast or braise, which Ranhofer calls the "remove." Everything here depends on gentle heat, since chicken tenders, quenelles and liver all toughen or break the moment they are pushed.

Minion filletsThe filet mignon of a chicken is the small tender that lies under the breast — what a supermarket sells as a chicken tenderloin. Sixteen means eight birds' worth, or one packet of tenders; pull the white sinew from each before shaping.
"Streak with tongue"This means larding: threading fine strips of cooked pickled or smoked tongue through the surface of the fillet with a larding needle, for colour contrast. Fine strips of good cured tongue or, failing that, cooked lean ham give the same red-on-white effect.
The column cutterA three-quarter inch column cutter is a plain round cutter of that diameter, used here as a form: the flattened fillet is curled around it into a ring and set on a buttered paper square so it holds its circle while poaching. Any 2 cm ring mould or a piece of dowel wrapped in foil will do.
Slack ovenA slack oven is the coolest working heat, roughly 275-300F. The buttered paper on top is a cartouche; the point is to steam the fillets in mushroom essence without browning them. Ranhofer gives no timing; poach only until the forcemeat is just set — chicken tenders are dry much past 165F internal.
Quenelle forcemeatRanhofer's chicken and game forcemeats are pounded raw meat bound with panada, butter and egg. A food processor does the pounding in seconds, but keep everything cold or the emulsion breaks. The teaspoon quenelles are shaped between two spoons; the recipe says boiling salted water, though barely trembling water treats them more gently, as hard boiling breaks them.
Villeroy sauceA Villeroy is a thick allemande used as a coating: the liver slices are dipped, chilled until the sauce sets firm, then breaded and fried. The refrigeration step is not optional — if the coating is soft the crumbs slide and the sauce leaks into the fat.
Ducks' liver escalopsEscalops means slices cut from duck liver — in Ranhofer's kitchen, fattened liver; he specifies no thickness. Foie gras is expensive and its sale is restricted in some jurisdictions; ordinary duck livers, trimmed and firm, work in the same construction though they will not have the same texture.
Mushroom essence and financièreMushroom essence is simply a heavily reduced mushroom cooking liquor. Financière sauce is a madeira-and-truffle demi-glace, served in a sauceboat here rather than poured over the garnish.
ScaleForty-eight separate pieces — sixteen of each — are meant to ring a large roast on a platter for a sizeable party. Scaled down to four or six, it becomes a plated first course of two or three items per person.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole grammar of the grand French kitchen in English. Garnitures like this one are that grammar's vocabulary: fixed, named combinations that a chef could call for by name alone, in the manner Escoffier would later formalise. Connétable is the Constable of France, once the highest military officer of the crown — one of a whole family of nineteenth-century garnish names (financière, royale, Colbert, Rothschild) that borrowed the language of rank and office to signal expense. The label carries no fixed meaning of its own; what marks the preparation as costly is the material, truffle, tongue, foie gras and game forcemeat, and above all the labour of building three separate composed items to be eaten as decoration around something else.