No. 738

Richelieu Garnishing, Ancient and Modern

Garniture Richelieu, Ancienne et Moderne

Ancient.—Eighteen medium sized onions (each one weighing an ounce), stuffed with chicken forcemeat a la Soubise (No. 89). Six ounces of cock's-combs, eight ounces of escalops of foies-gras (No. 2279). To be served with champagne sauce separate (No. 445).

Modern.—Six ounces of pear-shaped blanched carrots, six ounces of cauliflower, six ounces of green peas, six ounces of string beans, six ounces of asparagus tops, six ounces of potato balls, six ounces of mushrooms, eight stuffed lettuces and eight stuffed tomatoes. Dress these in separate groups and serve separately a demi-glaze sauce (No. 413).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a dish but a garnish specification — the assembled trimmings that go around a large roast or braised joint in classical service. Ranhofer gives quantities and cross-references and assumes you already know the component recipes.

Read it as a parts listEvery number in parentheses points to another entry in The Epicurean: the Soubise forcemeat, the foies-gras escalops, the champagne sauce, the demi-glaze. Nothing here is self-contained, and the garnish only makes sense mounted around a piece of meat that has already been cooked and dressed.
Scale of the thingEighteen stuffed onions plus six to eight ounces each of several other elements makes a substantial platter, though Ranhofer gives no yield or serving count. Both versions appear intended for a single large centrepiece presented whole, then carved and served with the garnish distributed around it.
Cock's combsThe fleshy crest of a rooster, blanched, peeled of its outer skin, and simmered white in a blanc. Ranhofer could buy them by the pound; today they turn up only through specialist poultry suppliers, and there is no substitute that behaves the same way. Omitting them costs the ancient version its period character but nothing else.
Foies-gras escalopsSlices cut from a whole cooked lobe, warmed through rather than seared. Foie gras is restricted or banned in some jurisdictions; check before ordering.
"Pear-shaped" carrotsSmall tapered carrot shapes, cut or turned to a uniform size, then blanched. Uniformity is the whole point in a garnish arranged in separate groups.
Dress in separate groupsThe modern version is the hinge instruction: the nine vegetable elements are not tossed together but arranged in distinct bouquets around the platter, each cooked to its own timing and seasoned separately. Peas, beans and asparagus tops should be refreshed in ice water after boiling to hold their colour until service.
Sauce served apartBoth versions send the sauce to the table in a boat rather than over the garnish — champagne sauce for the ancient, demi-glaze for the modern. Napping the vegetables would defeat the arrangement.
Stuffed lettuces and tomatoesThe lettuces are braised heads, trimmed, filled and folded; the tomatoes are hollowed and filled, commonly with a forcemeat or duxelles. Ranhofer gives no method or temperature here; cook them only until they will still hold their shape.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's service as chef at Delmonico's in New York ran to more than thirty years, though in two spells rather than one unbroken stretch, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system set down in print — over a thousand pages in which garnishes are catalogued and numbered like parts in a catalogue, because that is how a large brigade actually worked. Garnishes bearing a proper name are the backbone of nineteenth-century French service: a cook told to send out a saddle of veal Richelieu needed no further instruction. The name is generally traced to the Duc de Richelieu, the eighteenth-century marshal and a descendant of the Cardinal, whose table was a byword for extravagance, though the attachment of his name to any particular combination of onions, cock's-combs and foie gras is culinary tradition rather than documented fact. What makes this entry worth reading is that Ranhofer prints both versions side by side. The ancienne is an aristocratic garnish of offal and forcemeat; the moderne, written for his own clientele, is nine vegetable elements arranged in tidy groups, among them stuffed lettuces and stuffed tomatoes — a quiet record of how the classical repertoire lightened between the Second Empire and the Gilded Age dining room.