No. 736

Ramisolle Garnishing

Garniture de Ramisolles

Soak fourteen ounces of fresh bread-crumbs in some milk for one-half hour, then extract well all the liquid. Remove the skin from eight ounces of cooked chicken meat, eight ounces of raw chicken livers and three ounces of truffles; all being finely chopped up. Fry in one ounce of butter, a tablespoonful of chopped shallots or onions, before they attain a color, add to them the raw chicken livers and fry both together, then throw in the chicken and truffles, seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg, and lastly add the bread-crumbs, let it all get very hot, then cool it off slightly and beat in six egg-yolks. Lay this preparation between two pancakes, cut into desirable pieces, dip them each in beaten egg, roll in bread-crumbs and fry. A Madeira sauce (No. 492) accompanies this garnishing.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A stuffed-pancake garnish from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built on a bread panade bound with egg yolks. It is a component rather than a course, but it works perfectly well as a first course on its own.

The hinge: squeeze the panade dryFourteen ounces of crumb soaked in milk holds a great deal of liquid, and "extract well" means wringing it out in a cloth until it is barely damp. A wet panade will not set with the yolks and the filling will burst out in the fryer.
Weights, not cupsFourteen ounces of fresh crumbs is roughly 7-8 loosely filled cups from a soft white loaf; use a scale. The recipe gives eight ounces cooked chicken, eight ounces livers and three ounces truffles, but does not make clear whether these are weighed before or after skinning and trimming.
Cook the livers throughThey go into the pan raw and finish there. Fry until no pink remains at the centre before the chicken and truffles join them, since the second frying only crisps the outside and heats the parcel.
Egg yolks off the heat"Cool it off slightly" is doing real work. Beat the six yolks into a mixture below about 140F or they will scramble in threads through the forcemeat.
The pancakesRanhofer means plain unsweetened crepes, thin and pliable, not American breakfast pancakes. Spread the filling about a quarter-inch thick between two crepes, chill the sandwich firm, then cut into squares, diamonds or rounds before breading.
TrufflesThree ounces of black truffle is a serious outlay now; canned or jarred summer truffle, or a smaller quantity of black winter truffle with a little of its juice, gives the intended perfume. Sauteed cremini will fill the space but not replace the scent.
FryingThe recipe says only 'fry'. If deep-frying, 350-360F for two to three minutes, until the crumb coat is deep gold, suits the parcels; anything hotter colours the crust before the interior heats through.
Yield and serviceThe quantities give something over two and a half pounds of filling, enough to garnish a large platter or serve eight to ten as a first course; the recipe says only that a Madeira sauce (No. 492) accompanies the garnishing.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a record of the restaurant's kitchen, and its garnishing chapter reflects a style of service in which a roast or a rel/ev/e arrived surrounded by small constructed items. Here ramisolle names a pancake-and-forcemeat sandwich, breaded and fried, comparable to the Italian crespelle or the fried stuffed pancakes of provincial French cooking, dressed up with truffle. The bread panade beaten with yolks is a standard nineteenth-century binder for a chopped forcemeat, and chicken liver and truffle with a Madeira sauce is a familiar pairing of the period, echoing the same trio in a classic gratin forcemeat.