No. 703

Provencal Garnishing

Garniture a la Provencale

Prepare for this garnishing eighteen small stuffed tomatoes a la Provencal (No. 2835), eighteen stuffed mushrooms (No. 692), adding to them a bit of garlic, and eighteen croquettes, made with half a pound of minced onions blanched for ten minutes in plenty of water, then fried colorless in butter with their same weight of minced cooked artichoke bottoms, add an allemande sauce (No. 407), and when cold make small croquettes with this preparation, letting them be round and flat; bread-crumb and then dip them in egg, bread-crumb again and fry them a fine color. Garnish around the remove, with these, alternating the tomatoes, the stuffed mushrooms, and the croquettes.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a composed garnish for a large joint or bird, not a dish in itself: three separate items, eighteen of each, ringed around the platter in rotation. Ranhofer assumes you have the cross-referenced recipes to hand, so the work is mostly in reading between the numbers.

What a "remove" isThe remove (French relevé) is the substantial meat course that replaced the soup or fish on the table — a roast saddle, a braised ham, a large poultry. This garnish is arranged around it on the serving dish. Ranhofer gives no number of covers; eighteen of each item simply implies a large formal service. Scale the three components down proportionally if you are cooking for fewer.
Allemande sauceAllemande is classically a velouté (white stock thickened with blond roux) reduced and finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison, usually sharpened with lemon; Ranhofer's No. 407 is not reproduced here. In this recipe it acts purely as the binder for the croquettes, so make it thick — a loose sauce will not set firm enough to shape. Any well-reduced velouté finished with yolks does the job.
"Fried colorless"This means sweated in butter over low heat until soft and translucent with no browning at all. Colour would be a fault: the croquettes are meant to read as pale and delicate against the red tomatoes. Keep the pan below a sizzle and cover it if the onions start to catch.
Artichoke bottomsFresh bottoms mean trimming globe artichokes down to the fond and cooking them in acidulated water. Frozen or good-quality jarred bottoms are an honest substitute; drain and blot them dry, because excess moisture will slacken the binding and the croquettes will burst in the fat. Half a pound of onions calls for half a pound of prepared bottoms.
Chill before shaping"When cold" is the hinge of the croquette. Spread the bound mixture in a shallow tray and refrigerate it until genuinely firm, at least two hours, before forming the flat discs. Warm mixture will not hold a shape and will not take a clean crust.
The breading orderCrumb, then egg, then crumb again — Ranhofer's sequence, and it works because the first dry coat gives the egg something to grip on a moist mixture. A conventional flour-egg-crumb pass will also serve. Rest the breaded discs in the refrigerator for half an hour so the coating sets.
FryingDeep fat at 350–375°F. "A fine color" is deep gold, which takes about two minutes a side; the interior is already cooked, so you are only crisping and heating through. Fry in small batches to keep the fat temperature up and drain on paper.
À la provençale means garlicThe instruction to add "a bit of garlic" to the stuffed mushrooms is what pulls them into the Provençal register, alongside the tomatoes. One small clove, minced very fine, distributed among eighteen caps — this is seasoning, not a flavour statement.
Timing the assemblyTomatoes and mushrooms can be baked and held warm; the croquettes must be fried at the last minute or the crust softens. Arrange them on the hot platter in strict alternation, as specified — the recipe's own instruction gives the ring of red, brown and gold.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole grammar of that cooking, garnishes included. The numbered garniture section is essentially a catalogue of interchangeable parts: a cook building a menu picked a remove, then picked a garnish by number, and the cross-references did the rest. À la provençale in the classical repertoire signals tomato, garlic and olive oil, the shorthand for Provence that had been fixed in French kitchen usage well before Ranhofer wrote; here it survives as tomatoes stuffed in the southern manner and a whisper of garlic in the mushrooms, everything else bound with the thoroughly northern allemande. That tension — regional labels applied to fundamentally Parisian technique — runs through most of the nineteenth-century grande cuisine repertoire. The scale is worth noting too: eighteen of each item, made to circle a single joint, belongs to a service in which one dish came to the table as an object to be looked at before it was carved.