No. 680

Macedoine Garnishing

Garniture Macedoine

Cut into small quarter of an inch squares, eight ounces of carrots, selecting only the very red part, or else use a round or oval vegetable spoon, two to three-eighths of an inch in diameter; have eight ounces of string beans cut into small lozenges, also six ounces of very tender turnips, prepared exactly the same as the carrots: blanch these separately in salted water, keeping them slightly hard, then lay them with a piece of butter in a sautoire and season with salt and sugar; toss them for a few minutes on a brisk fire to dry well the moisture, then drain off the butter. Put on, to reduce, two or three gills of bechamel (No. 409), stir into it a few spoonfuls of raw cream, and finally a few spoonfuls of root glaze (No. 403); remove it from the fire, and add to it the vegetables already cooked, as well as six ounces of green peas, and six ounces of asparagus tops, both previously boiled in salted water. Finish the macedoine by incorporating into it three ounces of fresh butter broken up into small bits.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic mixed-vegetable garnish bound in a buttery cream sauce, meant to be spooned around a roast or into pastry cases rather than served as a vegetable side. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the cut and the blanching.

Keep the vegetables underdoneThe instruction to blanch "keeping them slightly hard" is the hinge. They are tossed in butter and then sit in hot sauce; anything blanched to tenderness will collapse into mush by the time it reaches the table.
The vegetable spoon"Two to three-eighths of an inch in diameter" reads oddly today but means a range of 2/8 to 3/8 inch, roughly 6-10 mm, i.e. a small parisienne (melon-ball) cutter. Quarter-inch squares are offered as the alternative.
LozengesString beans cut "into small lozenges" means diagonal diamond shapes about the same size as the carrot dice, not lengths. The cut vegetables are matched to one another in size.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two or three gills of bechamel is 1 to 1.5 cups. Reduce it before the cream goes in, not after.
Root glazeNo. 403 is a reduced vegetable/root stock glaze; a few spoonfuls of a well-reduced stock does similar work. It is there for depth and gloss, not bulk.
Raw creamMeans fresh, uncooked cream, stirred in rather than boiled. Ordinary heavy cream is the practical substitute.
SautoireA straight-sided saute pan, wide and shallow. The width matters: the vegetables need surface area to dry off their blanching water in a few minutes over high heat.
Mounting the butterThe three ounces of butter go in off the fire, in small pieces, worked in gradually. Return the pan to heat afterwards and the sauce will break.
YieldAbout two pounds of prepared vegetables, before the sauce and butter.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's kitchen, and the Garnishings section is essentially a parts catalogue: each numbered entry is a component to be cross-referenced from a hundred main dishes. The name macedoine is generally traced to Macedonia and Alexander's empire of mingled peoples, a joke about diversity in a single dish; the usage appears in French culinary writing well before Ranhofer and covers both this cooked, sauced version and the cold fruit macedoines served as dessert. The cross-references to bechamel (No. 409) and root glaze (No. 403) show how the book was meant to be read - not as standalone recipes but as a system, in which a brigade already had the sauces standing on the stove and needed only to know the proportions.