No. 675

Henrion Garnishing

Garniture a la Henrion

Raise the fillets from six snipes, remove all the nerves and skin, pare, season them with salt, and pepper, and saute them in butter a few minutes before serving. Trim twelve slices of un-smoked red beef tongue into half heart-shaped pieces the same size as the snipe fillets, and heat them in a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with Madeira wine. Have twelve croquettes made of blanched chicken livers, the finely chopped insides of the snipes, and the meat cut from the thighs, also some mushrooms; the livers, thighs, and mushrooms to be cut into three-sixteenths of an inch square; mix the whole with a brown sauce (No. 414), and use this preparation for making round croquettes one and a half inches wide by one quarter of an inch thick, dip them in beaten egg, then bread-crumbs, and fry them a nice color. Serve separately a financiere sauce (No. 464), finished with the snipe carcasses.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a standalone dish but a garniture — a composed accompaniment meant to be arranged around a roast or entrée in the French service of the 1890s. It assumes a working stock pot and the numbered sauces from elsewhere in the book.

The hinge: do not overcook the filletsSnipe breast is dark, lean and very small; Ranhofer says only to saute them in butter "a few minutes before serving," which is as much about cooking them at the last moment as about the length of cooking. Take them no further than lightly done: cooked through they turn dry and livery, and the whole garnish loses its point.
SnipeWilson's snipe is a legal migratory game bird in the United States within season, and common snipe likewise in Britain — but it is not a shop item. In the US it can only come from a hunter, since sale of migratory game birds is prohibited; in Britain a licensed game dealer may sell it in season. Six snipe yield twelve small fillets, hence the twelve tongue pieces and twelve croquettes.
"The finely chopped insides"Snipe and woodcock were traditionally cooked and served undrawn, the trail (intestines, heart, liver) counted a delicacy. Here it goes into the croquette mixture and is fried through. Discard the gizzard, which is gritty, and the eyes.
Un-smoked red beef tonguePickled or corned tongue, cured in brine with nitrate, which gives it the red colour; the instruction is simply that it must not be a smoked tongue. Buy it cooked and peeled, then slice about a quarter inch thick and cut the half-heart shapes.
Half-glaze and brown sauceNo. 413 is demi-glace, No. 414 the espagnole beneath it. A good reduced veal stock stands in for either; the brown sauce for the croquettes should be thick enough to bind the diced filling into something that will hold a shape when cold.
Croquette assemblyChill the bound mixture thoroughly before forming. At an inch and a half across by a quarter inch thick these are flat discs, not the usual cylinders, and they fry in a minute or two at 350-375F.
Financière sauceNo. 464 is a Madeira-and-truffle sauce. "Finished with the snipe carcasses" means the crushed bones and legs are simmered in it and the sauce strained, which is what ties the sauce to the birds.
Scale and serviceTwelve fillets, twelve tongue pieces and twelve croquettes; the book gives no number of covers, though twelve of each element suggests it was sized for a platter of that order. The sauce goes to the table separately, as the recipe directs, rather than over the garnish, or the croquettes soften.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its long catalogue of numbered garnitures is the clearest surviving picture of how a grand American restaurant kitchen of the period actually assembled a plate. Garnishes in this system were named — à la financière, à la Grimod, à la Henrion — and the names served as shorthand between chef and cook: say the word and the brigade knows the components. Who Henrion was is not recorded in the book, and such names attached variously to patrons, colleagues, and figures the chef wished to flatter, so any identification would be guesswork. What the recipe does document plainly is the place of snipe on a nineteenth-century American menu: wild shorebirds were commercial market game, sold by the barrel, and appear throughout Ranhofer alongside canvasback, plover and reedbird. The Weeks-McLean Act of 1913 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 closed commercial hunting of migratory birds, which is why a dish that once required only a trip to the market now requires a hunting licence.