No. 846

Bressoles of Chicken

Bressoles de Volaille

Have some oval molds buttered the same as for the foies-gras (No. 848) they should be a quarter of an inch high; cover the bottoms and sides with quenelle forcemeat either of chicken or game (No. 62). For chicken bressoles mix in with chicken quenelle forcemeat a third as much puree of foies-gras and in the center place a salpicon of chicken a la Reine (No. 938).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade that already has forcemeat, purée and salpicon standing by, so this entry is really an assembly note. Almost everything you need to know is in the cross-references.

What the numbers meanNo. 62 is the quenelle forcemeat, No. 938 the salpicon à la Reine, No. 848 the foies-gras mold treatment. Without those three components on hand there is no recipe here; work them out first and treat this page as the plan for lining and filling.
The moldsSmall oval molds, buttered. The text says they should be a quarter of an inch (about 6 mm) high; line the bottom and sides with forcemeat, leaving a hollow in the center for the filling.
Quenelle forcemeatA period farce of pounded raw chicken or game with panada and cream, sieved smooth. A food processor does the pounding in seconds, but keep meat, cream and bowl cold or the emulsion breaks and the lining weeps fat as it cooks.
Foies-gras puréeOne third the volume of the forcemeat, which is a great deal — the mixture is meant to taste of liver. Sieved cooked foie gras or a good mousse de foie gras is the closest supermarket stand-in; smooth pâté will work but is saltier, so cut back on seasoning in the farce.
Salpicon à la ReineCooked chicken cut in small even dice, bound in a thick velouté or allemande with mushrooms and often truffle. It must be cold and stiff before it goes in the center, or it will seep into the lining.
The cooking, which the text omitsBressoles of this kind are poached rather than baked dry: cover the filled molds, stand them in a water bath and cook until the forcemeat is just set and springs back. The entry gives no temperature or timing. Water that simmers will make the forcemeat grainy - keep it barely trembling.
Unmolding and servingRest a few minutes, blot the butter, then turn out and serve at once. The entry names no sauce; a supreme or Madeira sauce would suit.

A Little History

Bressoles (also spelled brésolles) belongs to the vocabulary of the nineteenth-century French kitchen, where it meant a forcemeat case lined into a small mold and filled with a bound ragout — a miniature of the same logic that produces the vol-au-vent and the timbale. The name is traditionally traced to a Marquis de Brésolles said to have given his name to a dish of layered minced meat, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for some thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working reference rather than a home cookbook, which is why entries like this one are three sentences long and lean on numbered cross-references: the reader was assumed to be a cook in a brigade with a garde-manger already turning out quenelle forcemeat by the quart. The heavy dose of foie gras purée and the salpicon à la Reine place it squarely in the restaurant repertoire of the Gilded Age, when a "hot side dish" at Delmonico's meant a small, labor-intensive course.