No. 751

Royal Salpicon

Salpicon a la Royale

For Fat.—Ten ounces of mushrooms cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, ten ounces of white chicken meat cut the same, and four ounces of truffles cut the same. To be used with a fat supreme sauce (No. 547).

For Lean.—Ten ounces of lobster, ten ounces of mushrooms and four of truffles, all cut up in three-sixteenth inch squares, mixed with a lean bechamel sauce (No. 411), finished at the last moment with crawfish (No. 573) or lobster butter (No. 580) and cream.

← No. 750 Regence Salpicon Garnishings No. 752 Turbigo Salpicon →

For the Modern Kitchen

A salpicon is a bound dice — uniform cubes of cooked meat or fish held in a thick sauce — used to fill vol-au-vents, croustades, timbales and bouchées rather than served on its own. Ranhofer gives it in two versions because the nineteenth-century kitchen cooked to the Catholic calendar.

"Fat" and "lean"Gras and maigre: the first is built on meat stock and poultry, the second on fish and fish-based sauce for fast days and Fridays. They are alternatives, not stages; make one or the other.
The dice is the pointThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm — a small, exact brunoise. Everything must be cut to the same size or the filling reads as chunky instead of smooth. Cut the chicken and lobster cold and firm; warm meat tears.
Cross-referenced saucesNo. 547 is supreme (chicken velouté finished with cream and butter), No. 411 a béchamel made lean, No. 573 crawfish butter and No. 580 lobster butter. Any modern supreme or béchamel of coating thickness will serve; the shellfish butters are shells pounded with butter, then clarified.
Sauce quantityNone is given, as Ranhofer assumed a cook with sauces already standing. Bind the roughly 1½ lb of dice with just enough sauce to coat and hold it — around a cup — no more, or the filling runs out of the pastry.
Chicken and lobsterThe recipe does not say how the chicken is cooked; poached breast, cooled before dicing, suits. For the lean version use cooked lobster tail and claw meat; the shells are what you want for the finishing butter, so buy whole rather than picked meat.
MushroomsHere this most likely means cultivated mushrooms, cooked rather than raw — commonly stewed in butter with a little lemon. Cook and drain them first or they will water down the sauce as it stands.
TrufflesFour ounces of truffle is a serious outlay now; truffles recur constantly through this book, so the quantity would not have looked remarkable in a kitchen of that rank. Preserved truffle or a small quantity of fresh, cut fine, keeps the character; truffle oil does not, as the point here is texture as much as scent.
Finishing the lean versionThe shellfish butter and cream go in off the heat at the last moment. Boiling after they are added splits the butter and dulls the colour.
YieldAbout 1½ lb of dice, plus its sauce — enough to fill roughly two dozen small bouchées, or one large vol-au-vent.

A Little History

Salpicon comes into French from Spanish, where it names a chopped seasoned mixture; by the classical period it had narrowed to a fine dice bound in sauce, and Escoffier and Ranhofer alike list dozens of them under garnishes rather than dishes. Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working system written down — which is why the salpicons appear as numbered components keyed to numbered sauces rather than as standalone recipes. The paired fat and lean versions reflect a clientele that still observed abstinence days; a house of that rank was expected to serve the same dish, at the same standard, whichever calendar the guest was keeping. The precision of "three-sixteenth inch" is characteristic: Ranhofer was writing for cooks who would be judged on whether the dice in a bouchée were all the same size.