No. 676

Imperial Garnishing

Garniture a l'Imperiale

Have a half pound or eight whole truffles peeled and cooked in champagne; eight escalops of foies-gras, breaded a la Villeroi, and fried; sixteen pieces of fluted mushroom heads (No. 118) cooked in butter. lemon juice and water; eight cocks'-combs and eight cocks'-kidneys, sixteen chicken quenelles made with a teaspoon (No. 155). Arrange the foies-gras at the end of the dish and the remainder of the garnishing in clusters around, and cover with a little half-glaze sauce (No 413) and Madeira. Serve in a separate sauce-boat a financiere sauce (No. 464).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a dish but a composed garnish from Ranhofer's system, meant to be arranged around a large roast or braised bird and served with its own sauce. Nearly every element points to another number in the book, so read it as an assembly list rather than a standalone recipe.

What the cross-references areNo. 118 is fluted mushroom heads, No. 155 chicken quenelles, No. 413 half-glaze (demi-glace), No. 464 financière sauce. Without those you are supplying the sub-recipes yourself: a good demi-glace, a chicken forcemeat, and a financière built on demi-glace with truffle, mushroom and Madeira.
YieldThe counts — eight escalops, eight truffles, sixteen mushrooms, sixteen quenelles — point to a service of about eight, with two of the smaller items each; the recipe itself names no number of guests. Scale by the guest count, not by weight.
Cocks' combs and kidneysCombs and "kidneys" (the testicles, called rognons de coq) were standard 19th-century garnish material and are effectively unobtainable at retail now. Combs must be blanched, the outer skin rubbed off in salt, then poached in white stock until translucent; specialist poultry suppliers occasionally carry them. Both can be left out, increasing the quenelles and truffled mushrooms instead.
"À la Villeroi"Villeroi means the escalops are first coated in a thick, cooled allemande or velouté sauce, set until firm, then breaded and fried. The book assumes you know this; skipping the sauce coat and simply breading raw foie gras will render it into the pan.
Foie gras handlingEscalops for frying want to be well chilled and the fat very hot and quick — a minute or so a side. Anything longer and the lobe melts into the crumbs, which is the failure this garnish is most often judged on.
Truffles in champagneA half pound of fresh black truffle is a period luxury with a modern price to match. Peeled truffles simmered briefly in a dry sparkling wine is the intent; the poaching liquid should be saved and reduced into the demi-glace rather than discarded.
Quenelles "made with a teaspoon"Two wetted teaspoons are used to shape the forcemeat into small ovals, which are then poached gently in salted water or light stock at a bare tremble, well short of a boil. Boiling water breaks them.
Sauce disciplineThe half-glaze with Madeira is only a light napping over the garnish; the financière goes to table separately. Stir the Madeira in off the heat so the aroma survives, and do not reduce the sauce after it goes in.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertoire written out in the classical French manner — including whole sections of numbered garnishes, each a fixed combination that let a kitchen brigade produce a named dish on demand. "À l'impériale" belongs to the family of grand nineteenth-century garnitures (financière, Godard, Toulouse) built from truffle, quenelles, cockscombs and cocks' kidneys, luxury trimmings whose whole point was visible expense. The presence of cockscombs is the clearest period marker: they were prized for their gelatinous texture and pale, tidy shape, appearing in French cookery from at least the seventeenth century and persisting in the classical repertoire well into the twentieth, long after the offal-heavy garnish had begun to seem old-fashioned.