No. 666

Fermiere Garnishing

Garniture a la Fermiere

Sixteen persons.—One pound and a half of braised cabbage (No. 2706), arranged in clusters. Eighteen small braised lettuce (No. 2754), eighteen potatoes, cut olive shaped, blanched, cooked afterward in broth, and let fall to a glaze. Eighteen pear shaped carrots, blanched, and cooked in white broth, then let fall to a glaze. Dress all these garnishings in clusters, being careful to alternate tastefully the different colors. Serve separately thickened gravy (No. 405).

← No. 665 Duchess Garnishing Garnishings No. 667 Financiere Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a component recipe from a book built out of cross-references: a plated garnish of vegetables meant to accompany a large braised or roasted joint for sixteen. Everything hinges on the glazing, which is where the shine and most of the flavour come from.

"Let fall to a glaze"The vegetables finish cooking in a shallow pan of broth that is reduced until only a syrupy film remains, which you then roll the vegetables in. Keep the liquid barely covering them and swirl the pan at the end; if the reduction goes past syrup it will scorch and turn bitter in seconds.
Olive and pear shapesBoth are turned vegetables, carved with a small knife into small tapered footballs (olive) or squat tapered cones (pear); the familiar seven-sided count is a later professional convention rather than anything the book specifies. Uniform size matters more than perfect facets, since the point is that everything glazes at the same rate. Reckon on roughly a pound of raw potatoes and a pound of carrots to yield eighteen turned pieces of each, depending on how much you trim away.
White brothRanhofer's white broth is an unbrowned veal or poultry stock, not water and not a dark beef stock. Use a light unsalted chicken stock; the glaze concentrates whatever salt is in it several times over.
Blanching firstThe recipe says only that the potatoes and carrots are blanched before they go into the broth; in practice that means a brief plunge into boiling water. It firms the shapes and washes surface starch off the potatoes, which helps keep the reduction clear, though the book gives no reason of its own.
The cross-referencesNo. 2706 is braised cabbage, No. 2754 braised lettuce, No. 405 the thickened gravy. Those entries are not reproduced here, so their contents are inferred: any sound braised cabbage will serve; the lettuce is presumably whole small heads, blanched, squeezed dry, then braised in stock and butter until collapsed and silky, and the gravy is most likely a reduced brown stock lightly thickened.
Timing and holdingBraise the cabbage and lettuce ahead and reheat them in a little of their liquid. Glaze the potatoes and carrots last and dress immediately; glazed vegetables dull and weep quite quickly once they sit.
Dressing in clustersThe instruction to alternate colours is the whole design. Arrange the four elements in separate mounds around the meat rather than tossing them together, and serve the gravy in a boat so the glaze is not washed off on the platter.
ScalingAs written this garnishes a joint for sixteen. Quarter it for four: 6 oz cabbage, four or five lettuce, and four or five each of the potatoes and carrots.

A Little History

À la fermière means "in the farmer's wife's manner," and in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage it signalled a garnish of plain vegetables — cabbage, root vegetables, sometimes lettuce or celery — as against the truffles and cockscombs of a financière, which is the very next entry in this section. The rusticity is nominal: turning potatoes and carrots into matched olives and pears, then glazing each batch separately, is exacting work that assumes a brigade. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean, organised the book as a system rather than a series of dishes, so a garnish like this exists to be summoned by number into dozens of meat preparations elsewhere in the volume. The naming convention itself is generally traced to Carême and the early nineteenth-century codification of French service, where a garnish label was a shorthand any trained cook could read.