No. 75

Chicken or Game Cream Forcemeat

Farce a la Creme de Volaille ou de Gibier

Have one pound of chicken or game meat (the breast), free of nerves or skin, pass them twice through the machine (Fig. 47); or else chop and pound to a pulp, then press through a sieve, return to the mortar and mix in one egg-white, half an ounce of salt, red pepper and nutmeg, the equal quantity of six or eight gills of cream, before whipping; mixing it in gradually with a whip and working it well. Should the forcemeat be too thick add cream, and if it lacks consistency, more egg-white.

← No. 74 Cream Chicken Forcemeat with Bechamel and Mu Elementary Methods No. 76 Cream Forcemeat of Fish →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a mousseline forcemeat — the base for quenelles, timbales, mousselines and stuffed poultry — and everything about it depends on temperature and on the ratio of cream to flesh.

Keep everything coldThe hinge of the recipe. Meat, egg white, cream, bowl and blade should all be refrigerator-cold or colder, and the cream goes in gradually. If the mixture is allowed to warm up, the emulsion is liable to break and the cooked forcemeat will weep fat and water.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so six to eight gills is 3 to 4 cups of cream to one pound of breast meat. That is a generous ratio; start at the lower end and add more only if the mixture is stiff.
"The equal quantity ... before whipping"The phrasing is genuinely muddled in the original. It can be read as the cream being measured before it is whipped, and folded or beaten in cold; it can equally be read as the cream going in unwhipped and simply being worked in with a whisk. Either reading works, but whipped cream gives a lighter set.
SaltHalf an ounce is roughly 14 g, about two and a half teaspoons of fine salt (more by volume if you use a coarse one). Against a pound of meat plus three cups of cream that lands near 1.2 percent by weight, which is correct for a forcemeat -- it will taste properly seasoned rather than salty once poached.
The machine at Fig. 47A hand-cranked meat grinder. A food processor does the whole job: grind the chilled meat and egg white to a paste, then pass through a drum sieve or fine strainer, then pulse in the cream. The sieving is not optional if you want a smooth mousseline.
Red pepper and nutmegCayenne, used at a pinch, and freshly grated nutmeg — both are seasoning notes, not flavors you should be able to name in the finished dish.
Test before committingPoach a teaspoon of the mixture in barely simmering water for two or three minutes and taste it. That is how you judge the salt and whether it needs more cream or more white, rather than adjusting blind.
Cooking the finished forcemeatQuenelles and timbales made from this are poached at 170-175F, never at a boil; boiling water tears the emulsion apart. Cook to an internal 165F and no further.
YieldA pound of breast with three cups of cream gives something over two and a half pounds of forcemeat; how many quenelles that makes depends entirely on the size you shape them.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its "Elementary Methods" section is essentially a French professional kitchen's grammar set down in English for American cooks. Forcemeats occupy a long run of numbered entries because they were the structural material of grande cuisine: the same pounded, sieved paste became quenelles for a garnish, the lining of a chartreuse, the filling of a galantine, or a mousseline served in its own mold. The cream version here — meat, egg-white, cream and nothing else, no panada of bread or flour — is the lightest of the family, and the technique is close to what Escoffier would codify a decade later as a farce mousseline. That it calls for chicken or game reflects a period when grouse, partridge and venison came through a restaurant kitchen in quantity.