No. 677

Jardinière Garnishing

Garniture a la Jardinière

The jardinière is composed of whole roots and vegetables, or else cut into distinct pieces, such as carrots, turnips, string beans, cauliflower, small glazed onions, Brussels sprouts, asparagus tops or cucumbers cut in the shape of cloves of garlic. The carrots and turnips are to be blanched, but not refreshed, then sauted in butter with a little sugar, and finished cooking in beef broth (No. 194a), just sufficient so that when the roots are done the moistening is reduced to a glaze. The small onions to be sauted in butter with a little sugar and let fall to a glaze; the string beans cut in lozenges and cooked first in salted water, then refreshed and drained and sauted in butter. The cauliflowers to be cooked in water and cut into small flowerets, the Brussels sprouts, asparagus tops and cucumbers cooked in salted water, then sauted in butter. The green vegetables should be cooked in a copper vessel, the others in a tinned one. This garnishing is usually arranged in clusters and served with a separate brown Madeira sauce (No. 492). For entrees mix all the vegetables together and add to them a brown sauce (No. 414) and some fine butter.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A classic French vegetable garnish rather than a standalone dish: each vegetable is cooked separately to its own doneness, then reassembled. The whole point is that nothing is cooked together, so plan for several small pans and one hot serving moment.

The hinge: glaze, not braiseCarrots, turnips and onions finish in just enough broth that it reduces to a syrupy film as they become tender. Too much liquid and they boil into softness before the glaze forms; add broth in small amounts and swirl the pan at the end so the sugar and butter coat rather than pool.
Skip the copperCooking green vegetables in unlined copper was a nineteenth-century trick to fix their colour; copper ions displace the magnesium in chlorophyll to form a more stable green compound. It also leaches copper into the food. Use stainless steel, salt the water well, and shock in ice water, which will not give quite the same vivid green but is the safe alternative.
"Blanched, but not refreshed"The carrots and turnips go straight from the boiling water into the butter while still hot, so they take on the fat and sugar immediately. Of the rest, only the string beans are explicitly refreshed, which sets their colour and stops the cooking.
Cross-referenced componentsNo. 194a is Ranhofer's beef broth; substitute a good unsalted beef stock and expect to season at the end, since reducing to a glaze concentrates whatever salt is present. No. 492 is a brown Madeira sauce and No. 414 a plain brown sauce; a modern demi-glace with a splash of dry Madeira stands in for the first.
Turning the vegetables"Cut in the shape of cloves of garlic" is said of the cucumbers, and reads as turned (tourne) work: pared into small tapered barrels so they cook evenly and match each other. A small paring or turning knife does it; batons or melon-baller spheres are honest substitutes.
Sugar quantityThe original gives none. A teaspoon of sugar per pound of roots is ample — enough to help the glaze set without making the garnish taste sweet.
Timing and holdingEverything can be cooked ahead to the point of the butter sauté and held; reheat in a little butter and a spoonful of stock just before serving. Green beans, sprouts and asparagus lose their colour within minutes of being finished, so they go last.
QuantityAs a garnish around a roast or braise, allow roughly a half cup of mixed vegetables per person, arranged in separate clusters. Mixed together and bound with brown sauce and butter, as the last line directs, it becomes the vegetable element of an entrée and can be scaled up freely.

A Little History

Jardiniere is the feminine of jardinier, gardener -- the gloss 'the gardener's wife' is a traditional one rather than a documented origin -- and by the nineteenth century the word had become standard French kitchen shorthand for an assortment of fresh spring and summer vegetables cut to a uniform shape. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, printed The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working reference, and this entry sits in a long chapter of garnishes numbered so that any main-dish recipe could call for one by name and number alone. The insistence on separate pans, separate cooking waters and separate finishing is not fussiness but the classical position that a jardiniere is a composition of distinct vegetables, each at its best, rather than a stew. The instruction to use copper for green vegetables reflects a practice of the period, and the resulting colour was much admired.