No. 809

Rolls, Small Fancy with Lobster, Shrimp, Crawfish, Fillets of Sole, Chicken Salpicon, Foies-Gras or Rillettes de Tours

Petits Pains Garnis de Homard, Crevettes, Ecrevisses, Filets de Soles, Filets de Volaille ou Salpicon, Foies-gras on Rillettes de Tours

Have small plain rolls three and one-quarter inches long by one and three-quarter inches wide. These rolls must not be split on the side, but make an opening on the top, reserving the cover. Empty them of their crumb, and fill the entire insides with either lobster, crawfish, shrimp, or pressed cold fried soles, cutting them in three-sixteenth inch squares, season with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, tarragon, chervil, and parsley, thickening with a little mayonnaise. After the rolls are filled with this, lay the cover on top, and arrange them pyramidically over a folded napkin.

For Chicken or Salpicon.—Cut the chicken into three-sixteenth inch squares, also some mushrooms, and the same quantity of unsmoked red beef tongue, all the same size pieces; add half as much one-eighth of an inch squares of truffles, season with a mayonnaise mixing in with it a very fine tomato puree (No. 730), and seasoning it all highly, garnish and serve the same as the lobsters.

For Fancy Small Rolls Garnished Either with Chopped Ham, Foies-Gras from the Terrine, or Rillettes de Tours.—Make these rolls smaller than the others having them two and a quarter inches long by one and a quarter inches wide, fill them by making an incision on the side, and in this lay the garnishing of chopped ham, foies-gras, or rillettes. They can also be served plain arranged on a folded napkin.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a cold buffet item: hollowed dinner rolls packed with a dressed seafood or chicken salad, stacked on a napkin. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the cutting are the whole dish.

The hinge: dress first, bind secondThe filling is seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar and herbs, and only then thickened with a little mayonnaise. If you skip the vinaigrette stage and simply stir mayonnaise into the meat you get a heavy, flat filling; the acid and oil have to season the dice on their own first.
Dice sizeThree-sixteenths of an inch is a scant 5 mm — small, even cubes, not a chop. The truffle goes smaller still, an eighth inch (3 mm), because it is a seasoning rather than a component. Uniformity is what makes the filling hold together in the roll.
Roll dimensionsThe larger rolls are about 8 cm by 4.5 cm, roughly a soft dinner roll or small Parker House roll; the ham, foie gras and rillettes rolls are about 6 cm by 3 cm. Cut a lid from the top of the big ones, keep it, and pull out the crumb with your fingers, leaving the crust wall intact.
"Pressed cold fried soles"Sole fillets fried, cooled under a light weight so they firm up, then cubed. Any firm white fish behaves the same way. All four seafood options are fully cooked before dicing — this is a use for leftover cooked lobster, crawfish, shrimp or fish, not a raw preparation.
Unsmoked red beef tongueCured (brined) beef tongue, pink from the cure but not smoked. Sold today as pickled or corned tongue at some butchers; a mild unsmoked cooked ham is the closest common substitute, though it is a little sweeter.
Rillettes de Tours and terrine foie grasRillettes de Tours is pork slowly cooked in its own fat and shredded rather than pounded smooth, so it stays coarse and stringy; how it is said to differ from Le Mans rillettes varies with the source. Both it and the terrine foie gras go in as they are, with no dressing; these smaller rolls are split at the side and simply filled.
No. 730The cross-reference is to Ranhofer's tomato purée here on this page. A few teaspoons of good tomato paste loosened with water gives much the same effect: it tints and sharpens the mayonnaise without thinning it.
Timing and yieldThe recipe gives no timing or yield. Fill shortly before serving and keep them cold, or the dressing soaks the crust and the rolls collapse; as a rough guide, count one large roll or two small ones per person as part of a cold spread, and enough rolls to build the pyramid the text calls for.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in the long chapter of cold side dishes that opened a formal service or filled a supper buffet. Petits pains garnis belong to a French tradition of hollowing a roll and using the crust as an edible case, which spared the kitchen the fuss of pastry and let one preparation be varied endlessly by filling. The list of fillings reads like an inventory of the larder: yesterday's boiled lobster, cured tongue, truffle trimmings, a terrine already broached. Rillettes de Tours points to the Loire, where potted pork was and remains a regional specialty, and its appearance on a Manhattan menu of the 1890s suggests how far Delmonico's reached for French charcuterie, whether imported or made in the house. The instruction to arrange them pyramidically over a folded napkin is period service: the napkin steadied the stack and caught moisture, and pyramids were a common way of piling small items on a platter.