No. 689

Mirmidons with Parmesan Garnishing

Garniture de Mirmidons an Parmesan

A mirmidon is small canelon. They are made thin and short and are filled with a special preparation. Pound two raw chicken fillets with an equal quantity of cooked fat livers; two or three raw peeled truffles, and two or three raw peeled truffles, and two raw egg-yolks; season this forcemeat and press it through a sieve. Prepare a noodle paste (No. 142), roll it out into a thin, long, three inch wide band, and cut this band transversely into three inch length pieces; plunge them into boiling, salted water, and let them cook for eight minutes, then remove the saucepan to the side of the fire, to keep the water bubbling for two minutes longer; the paste should now be done. Drain the pieces with a skimmer, and set them in a vessel containing tepid, salted water, then lift them out one by one to wipe dry, and spread on the table; cover each separate piece with a layer of the prepared forcemeat, rolled so that the edges of the paste meet, and arrange these mirmidons on the bottom of a buttered sautoire (Fig. 130), keeping them close together, the edges of paste underneath; moisten to their heighth with a tomato sauce (No. 549) and half-glaze sauce (No. 413), reduced with two or three spoonfuls of Madeira wine; boil the sauce, cover the saucepan and set it on a very slow fire to allow the mirmidons to simmer from fifteen to twenty minutes; drain, trim the ends nicely, then range them in layers in a vegetable dish, dusting over each layer with grated parmesan, and besprinkling the top with a little Madeira sauce (No. 492).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's mirmidons are stuffed pasta rolls used as a garnish for large meat dishes, though the quantity makes a respectable course on its own. Most of the work is in the forcemeat; the assembly is straightforward once the terms are decoded.

The hinge: seam down, sauce barely tremblingThe rolls are held closed only by their own weight, so they must sit tightly packed with the overlap underneath. Once the sauce comes to a boil, drop it to the faintest simmer — a rolling boil will lift and unwind them.
Mirmidon, canelonA canelon here is a rolled pasta tube, what a modern kitchen calls cannelloni. A mirmidon is simply a short, thin one: three-inch squares of sheet pasta rolled around filling, not tubes stuffed after cooking.
"Cooked fat livers"Foie gras, already cooked — a terrine or torchon works. Ordinary chicken liver is not the same thing and will read coarse and bitter against the chicken fillet; if substituting, use a rich duck or chicken liver parfait.
Raw trufflesThe recipe wants them fresh and peeled, not preserved. Preserved truffle or truffle peelings are the practical substitute; add them at the end of pounding so they are not pulverised into grey paste.
Pounding and sievingA food processor replaces mortar and tamis. Keep the chicken and foie gras cold, pulse to a smooth paste, then push through a fine sieve if you want the silky texture the original assumes.
Cooking the pasta bandEight minutes at a full boil, then two more with the pan drawn to the side of the fire so the water only just bubbles, suits the noodle paste of No. 142. Modern fresh pasta rolled thin needs one to two minutes only, since it will spend another fifteen to twenty simmering in sauce.
SaucesHalf-glaze is demi-glace; No. 549 is a tomato sauce and No. 492 a Madeira sauce. The recipe gives no ratio: combine tomato sauce and demi-glace to taste, reduced with the two or three spoonfuls of Madeira it specifies.
SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold the rolls in a single close layer. The rolls must be moistened to their full height, so choose the pan by the amount of sauce you want to make.
YieldThe recipe gives no weights or serving count. Two chicken fillets and an equal weight of foie gras will fill something in the region of twenty-odd three-inch rolls, depending on how thickly they are spread.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long chapter of garnishings — the standardised accessories that dressed a roast or a relevé in the grande cuisine system. The name is generally taken to be a play on the Myrmidons, the soldiers Achilles led at Troy, the joke being small identical items ranged in close ranks in the pan; that reading is traditional rather than documented, and Ranhofer himself offers only the flat definition "a mirmidon is small canelon." What the recipe does show plainly is the period's appetite for layered luxury: chicken, foie gras and truffle bound with yolk, wrapped in fresh pasta, braised in demi-glace and tomato, then dusted with Parmesan — a dish built to be a footnote to something else on the plate.