No. 667

Financiere Garnishing

Garniture a la Financiere

Sixteen Persons. For Removes.—Should the garnishing be required for dressing around a large piece, then it can be composed of whole peeled truffles of quenelles, molded in a dessertspoon (No. 155), escalops of foies-gras, mushroom heads, cock's-combs and kidneys, lamb sweetbreads or small veal sweetbreads larded and glazed. This garnishing is used for garnishing removes of poultry, game and meats, dressing it in groups around and serving a financiere sauce (No. 464), separately.

For Entrees.—Cooked, peeled and minced truffles; small mushroom button heads, slices of sweetbreads a quarter of an inch thick, pared with a cutter to an inch in diameter, quarter inch thick slices of foies-gras pared with an inch diameter, round cutter, and oblong quenelles. Put the garnishings into a sautoire and cover with financiere sauce (No. 464). Use this garnishing for covering or surrounding entrees.

← No. 666 Fermiere Garnishing Garnishings No. 668 Flemish Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a dish but a kit of parts — Ranhofer's list of what belongs in a financière garnish, in two scales: the grand version for a remove and the reduced version for an entrée. Almost everything here is prepared elsewhere in the book, so treat it as an assembly sheet.

The hinge: everything is cooked before it meets the sauceTruffles, quenelles, sweetbreads, mushrooms and foie gras are each cooked, pared and cooled separately, then only warmed through in the sauce. If you poach raw quenelles or sweetbreads in the financière itself the sauce clouds and the sweetbreads shed liquid; hold them at a bare simmer for a few minutes, no more.
"Removes" and "entrees"A remove was a large centrepiece joint or bird that replaced the soup or fish course; the garnish is arranged in separate mounds around the platter and the sauce passed in a boat. The entrée version is cut small, bound in the sauce, and spooned over or around a smaller dish. Same components, different geometry.
Sixteen personsThe heading sets the scale, not a quantity. Ranhofer gives no weights or counts for any of the components here, and none can be derived from the text.
Cock's combs and kidneysCockscombs and cock's "kidneys" (in fact the testes) were a standard luxury garnish in the nineteenth century and are hard to obtain now outside specialist suppliers. They required long blanching, peeling of the outer skin and cooking in a white blanc. They are usually omitted today; nothing else in the list depends on them.
Foies-grasThe slices are presumably cut from a cooked terrine or a poached lobe, chilled firm, then stamped with a one-inch cutter; raw foie gras will not hold that shape. Ranhofer does not say which. He does direct the garnishings to be covered with sauce in the sautoire, so keep the heat low — the discs soften and break down quickly.
Lamb and veal sweetbreadsBoth are soaked, blanched, pressed under a weight, then larded and glazed for the remove version or sliced for the entrée. Veal sweetbreads are far easier to find than lamb; order ahead. "Glazed" means brushed with reduced brown stock and set under high heat until shining.
Quenelles molded in a dessertspoonTwo dessertspoons dipped in hot water are used to shape the forcemeat into smooth ovals, which are then poached in barely simmering salted stock — the water must never boil or they break up. Roughly two teaspoons of forcemeat per quenelle.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep, of the sort now sold as a saute pan. Its point here is surface area: the garnish sits in a single layer and is turned in the sauce without being stirred and broken.
Financiere sauceRanhofer's No. 464 is a Madeira-based demi-glace finished with truffle essence. If you build it from a modern reduced veal stock, keep it on the thin side of coating — it has to nap the garnish without gluing it into a mass.

A Little History

Financière — "in the financier's manner" — is one of the classic French garnish names that advertises expense rather than a place or a person: truffles, foie gras, sweetbreads and cockscombs were the costliest things a nineteenth-century kitchen handled, and the name is generally read as a joke at the expense of the moneyed men who could order such a plate. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, printed The Epicurean in 1894 as a working reference rather than a domestic cookbook, which is why garnishes occupy a section of their own, cross-referenced by number: a cook was expected to read "garniture à la financière" on a menu and assemble it from parts already standing in the larder. The list also shows how much of the offal repertoire has since fallen away — sweetbreads survive as a restaurant delicacy, while cockscombs, once merely a fiddly prep job for an apprentice, have all but vanished from Western kitchens.