No. 766

Toulouse Garnishing

Garniture Toulouse

Have eight ounces of truffles cut either into balls or else minced, and cooked in a little Madeira wine; add to these truffles, sixteen mushroom heads, eight turned and the other eight fluted (No. 118) twelve pretty cocks'-combs, and twelve cocks'-kidneys. Dress in clusters both the truffles and the other ingredients, and cover the whole with a buttered veloute sauce (No. 415) or clear chicken half-glaze (No. 389). Serve separately some of the same sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French garniture from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), meant to be spooned over or around a poached chicken, sweetbreads, or a vol-au-vent. Two of the four ingredients are effectively unobtainable now, so the useful question is what to do about them.

Cocks' combs and kidneysThe combs are the fleshy crest; the "kidneys" are in fact the testes, sold historically as rognons de coq. Neither is stocked by ordinary butchers today, and both require long preparation the recipe assumes you know: combs are soaked in cold water until blanched white, rubbed in coarse salt to strip the outer skin, then simmered in a white blanc until tender. A modern cook is likely to substitute more mushrooms and truffle, or small quenelles of chicken forcemeat.
Turned and fluted"Turned" mushrooms are trimmed to a smooth dome; "fluted" ones have spiral channels cut from crown to rim with the tip of a paring knife. Both are cooked white — a few minutes in water with butter and lemon juice — so they stay pale against the black truffle. The contrast is the entire visual point of the garnish.
Eight ounces of trufflesThat is 225 g of fresh black truffle for a single garnish, a quantity that reflects nineteenth-century Delmonico's pricing rather than any modern budget. Preserved truffle peelings or a much smaller fresh truffle, sliced thin, will carry the flavour; do not try to fake it with truffle oil in a sauce this delicate.
Cooked in MadeiraThe recipe gives no time or heat; gentle cooking, only until the truffle has perfumed the wine, is the usual reading. The Madeira left behind should go into the sauce rather than down the drain.
Velouté and half-glazeNo. 415 is the book's buttered velouté; No. 389 its clear chicken half-glaze, a reduced stock with body. Either should coat the back of a spoon and no more. Buttered velouté must not boil after the butter goes in or it will break.
Dress in clustersThe hinge of the whole thing. Each ingredient is grouped in its own small heap around the dish rather than stirred together — the garnish is arranged, not mixed, and losing that turns it into a fricassee.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The counts (sixteen mushroom heads, twelve combs, twelve kidneys) point to a large dish; scale the mushroom and truffle counts to the number of portions on the plate.

A Little History

Garniture Toulouse belongs to the fixed vocabulary of classical French service, where a named garnish told a cook exactly what went on the plate: for Toulouse, cockscombs and cocks' kidneys, mushrooms, truffles, and often quenelles, bound in a white or blond sauce. It is generally associated with the poultry country around Toulouse, though the link is traditional rather than documented, and the garnish was fixed in Parisian kitchens rather than Gascon ones. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, catalogued it here among hundreds of numbered garnishes because his book was written as a working reference for a brigade — the cross-references to numbered sauces and cuts assume a kitchen where someone else has already made the velouté. The offal it calls for was a laborious luxury, and it has long since vanished from menus.