No. 849
Brissotins of Chicken, Supreme
Brissotins de Volaille au Supreme
This is one of Ranhofer's shorthand entries: the method lives at No. 850 and everything else is a substitution list. Before starting, gather the four cross-referenced recipes, because none of the actual work is described here.
- Read the chain firstYou need No. 850 for the shaping and cooking, No. 938 for the salpicon, No. 75 for the forcemeat and No. 547 for the sauce. Ranhofer expected a brigade that already knew all four by number; a home cook has to assemble them on paper before touching a pan.
- Salpicon a la reineA salpicon is simply cooked meat cut into small even dice, here white chicken meat bound with a thick, well-reduced white sauce. It must be chilled until firm before it is enclosed in anything, or the filling will burst out during cooking.
- Chicken and cream forcemeatThis is a mousseline-type forcemeat: raw breast pounded (a food processor does it in seconds), sieved, then let down with cold cream. Everything — bowl, blade, cream — must stay refrigerator-cold, or the mixture breaks and separates.
- Supreme sauceA chicken velouty finished with cream and butter. Do not let it boil once the cream and butter are in; strain it and hold it warm in a bain-marie rather than over direct heat.
- Seasoning is on youPoach a teaspoon of the forcemeat and taste it before you commit the batch, and check the sauce for salt before serving.
- If the reference recipe fries themNo. 850 may finish these as small crumbed shapes in hot fat; check it before you start. If so, modern practice is roughly 350-375F: cooler and the coating soaks, hotter and the outside colors before the forcemeat sets.
The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered, cross-referenced structure is the point: the book is a working kitchen's index rather than a set of standalone recipes, which is why an entry like this one can consist of nothing but four substitutions. Brissotins belong to the large French family of small hot entrees built from a fine forcemeat wrapped around a bound dice of cooked meat — close cousins to croquettes and quenelles. The name's origin is obscure; it is sometimes linked to the Brissot surname, but no culinary source documents the connection, and it is safest treated as a period label rather than a story. The phrase a la reine, meanwhile, was standard nineteenth-century shorthand for a dish of white chicken meat in a cream sauce, and supreme for a chicken velouty finished with cream.