No. 748

Palermitaine Salpicon

Salpicon a la Palermitaine

To be prepared with five ounces of small macaroni cut in half inch lengths, five ounces of part-ridge breast, five ounces of artichokes in quarter inch squares, and three of ham in three-sixteenth inch squares; all these ingredients to be mixed with a turtle sauce (No. 552).

← No. 747 Montglas Salpicon Garnishings No. 749 Previllot Salpicon →

For the Modern Kitchen

A salpicon is a bound dice — everything cut to a uniform size and moistened with just enough sauce to hold it. Ranhofer expects it to be used as a filling for vol-au-vents, croustades, timbales or small patties rather than served on its own.

Cut sizes are the pointThe three different dimensions given (half-inch macaroni, quarter-inch artichoke, three-sixteenths ham) are deliberate, so each element stays identifiable on the tongue. Measure them rather than eyeballing, or the mixture reads as hash.
Quantities and yieldFive ounces each of macaroni, partridge and artichoke plus three of ham gives about 18 oz of solids. Ranhofer gives no yield and no sauce quantity; as a working guide that is enough for a dozen or so small patty cases, and enough sauce to gloss the dice rather than swamp them.
MacaroniNineteenth-century macaroni was a long hollow tube, cut down by the cook. Ditalini or short-cut penne cut in half gives the same effect. Boil it a shade under al dente, since it will sit in hot sauce.
PartridgeCook the birds first — roast or poach — then take the breasts and dice them cold, which is much the easiest way to get clean cubes. Guinea fowl breast, quail or a good free-range chicken breast all stand in acceptably; the flavour target is a slightly gamey white meat.
ArtichokesThe recipe says only 'artichokes'; Ranhofer almost certainly intends cooked artichoke bottoms, which dice cleanly. Frozen or good-quality tinned bottoms work; marinated hearts packed in oil and vinegar are best avoided, as their acidity sits awkwardly against a rich brown sauce.
HamLean cooked ham, not a dry-cured raw ham. Buy it in a single thick slab so you can cut a true small dice.
Turtle sauce (No. 552)Turtle sauce of this period is generally a brown espagnole or half-glaze enriched with madeira and infused with the so-called turtle herbs — basil, marjoram, savory, sage, thyme, rosemary and bay in varying combinations — sometimes with turtle trimmings; check No. 552 for Ranhofer's own version. Green and hawksbill turtles are now protected under CITES and are not lawfully sold as food; a madeira demi-glace steeped with that herb mixture delivers the flavour the recipe is after.
AssemblyWarm the sauce, fold in the dice off a hard boil and hold at just below a simmer for a few minutes. Prolonged cooking softens the macaroni and shreds the game breast, which defeats the whole construction.

A Little History

Salpicon comes into French cooking from the Spanish salpicón, a dish of chopped and seasoned meat, and by the nineteenth century it meant specifically a fine dice bound in a rich sauce and used to fill pastry. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gives a long run of them in The Epicurean (1894), each named for a place or a person in the classical manner — Montglas, Palermitaine, Previllot — and each distinguished by a swap of one or two components. The Sicilian label here is often said to follow a kitchen convention by which macaroni suggests Palermo or Sicily, much as à la milanaise came to mean a garnish of tongue, mushroom and macaroni in tomato. That such a garnish leans on a turtle sauce says a good deal about the period: green turtle was a luxury staple of American hotel cooking in the 1880s and 1890s, and the herb blend associated with it outlived the trade itself.