No. 769

Wings of Turkey or Pullet a la Villeroi Garnishing

Garniture d'Ailerons de Dinde ou de Poularde a la Villeroi

Singe turkey or pullet wings and bone them as far as the joint, season with salt and pepper, and fill in the empty space with a little quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and fine herbs, laying it in through a cornet and pushing the skin into the cut side so as to well enclose the forcemeat. They may be sewn with coarse thread, and then blanched and drained. Remove the feather stubs carefully and put the wings into a saucepan lined with bardes of salt pork, and covered with some mirepoix stock (No. 419). Lay more slices of pork on top of the wings and let them cook slowly for one hour or more; drain, pare, lay them in a bowl, pour the mirepoix stock over, and leave to get cold; then take them out and cover them with a villeroi sauce No. 560), with some chopped mushrooms added. Dip in beaten egg, and bread-crumbs, and fry a fine color.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A cross-reference recipe from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, written for a brigade that already had forcemeat, mirepoix stock and Villeroi sauce standing ready. The whole point of the dish is the sequence: braise, chill in the liquid until firm, coat, crumb, fry.

The hinge: chill before coatingThe wings must be completely cold and the sauce set hard before breading, or the coating slides off and the forcemeat bursts in the fryer. Chill the sauce-coated wings on a tray for at least an hour before egg and crumbs.
"Singe" and feather stubsSingeing over a flame burns off pinfeathers on a bird plucked by hand. Supermarket wings rarely need it; pull any remaining stubs with tweezers or the back of a paring knife.
CornetA rolled paper or cloth cone, i.e. a piping bag. A disposable piping bag with a plain half-inch tip does the same job of filling the boned pocket without tearing the skin.
Bardes of salt porkThin sheets of fatback used to line and cover the pan. Blanched salt pork or thinly sliced unsmoked fatback is closest; ordinary streaky bacon works but pushes smoke and cure flavour into a deliberately pale braise.
Mirepoix stock (No. 419)Not raw diced vegetables. Ranhofer's mirepoix is a cooked vegetable-and-ham base moistened with stock and white wine, used as a braising liquor. A light chicken stock with wine, carrot, onion, celery, thyme and bay is a reasonable stand-in.
Villeroi sauce (No. 560)A reduced Allemande, i.e. velouté enriched with egg yolk and cream and boiled down until it coats a spoon and sets solid when cold. That setting quality is what makes it work as a breading base; a thin sauce will not do.
Quenelle forcemeat (No. 89)Ranhofer's quenelle forcemeats are pounded meat or poultry mixtures generally bound with panada and egg. A modern food-processor mousseline of chicken breast, egg white and cream, well seasoned, behaves much the same way and is far quicker.
Braising time"One hour or more" over low heat, kept at a bare simmer rather than a boil. Wings are done when the meat gives at the joint; hold them in the liquid off the heat while it cools so they stay moist.
Frying and yieldDeep-fry at 350-375F, three to four minutes, only to colour the crumb and heat the interior — everything inside is already cooked. As written this is a garnish for a larger platter; figure two wings per person if you serve it as a course in its own right.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in his chapter of garnitures — the standardised trimmings a kitchen kept in rotation to dress a larger roast or entrée. À la Villeroi means an item masked in a stiff, reduced velouté-based sauce, chilled until the coating sets, then crumbed and fried; the name is generally traced to the Villeroy family of eighteenth-century France, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. Wing tips and second joints were exactly the sort of thrifty offcut a nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen turned into something expensive-looking: bone the joint, stuff the cavity with forcemeat, braise it in fat and stock, and the cheapest part of the bird arrives at the table golden and stuffed. The technique survives in the modern practice of stuffed, crumbed chicken wings found in French and Japanese cooking alike.