No. 868

Cromesquis of Chicken, Capon, Fat Pullet or Duck

Cromesquis de Volaille, de Chapon, Poularde ou de Canard

Cook a calf's udder as described in No. 109, and when finished cut it up into very thin slices from the widest part, then beat it down to decrease the thickness. Fry in two ounces of butter, one small finely chopped up shallot, add to it three ounces of flour and let cook slowly, then moisten with a quart of chicken broth (No. 188); season with salt, pepper and nutmeg; reduce, and add a pound of white poultry meat, either of chicken, capon, fat pullet, duck or other, and one pound of well drained mushrooms and four ounces of truffles; all three cut into three-sixteenths of an inch squares; let boil up once or twice while stirring from the bottom of the sautoire with a reducing spatula, and incorporate into it some good chicken jelly (No. 103); lay this preparation aside to become cold, having it spread on a flat dish to half an inch in thickness, and leave it until it is quite hard, then cut it up into equal sized oblongs one and a quarter inches by two and a half inches; cover each one with a slice of udder so as to completely enwrap it, and just when ready to serve, dip the cromesquis into a frying batter (No. 2), and plunge them into boiling fat to color; drain, and dress them pyramidically on a napkin with a bunch of fried parsley to decorate.

← No. 867 Cromesquis of Beef Palates Hot Side Dishes No. 869 Cromesquis of Crabs, Shrimps, Crawfish or Lo →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a classic croquette mixture — a thick veloute-bound salpicon — chilled hard, cut into blocks, wrapped in fat, battered and fried. Two things decide whether it works: the mixture must set solid, and the wrapper must hold.

The hinge: chill it hardThe roux-thickened poultry mixture has to be spread half an inch thick and left until it is quite hard, cutting like cold cheese; that means several hours cold, not merely cool. If it is only cool the blocks slump in the batter and burst in the fat.
Calf's udderNo longer sold in most countries and effectively unobtainable at retail. Its job here is a thin, pliable sheet of cooked fat that bastes the filling and keeps the batter off it; caul fat (crepine) or paper-thin blanched fatback does the same work, or the blocks can be breaded and fried without a wrapper as an ordinary croquette.
UnitsA quart of broth is 4 cups. Three ounces of flour is about two-thirds of a cup, and with only two ounces of butter that is a roux with noticeably more flour than butter, and thicker than a standard sauce roux — deliberately so, since it must set to a sliceable paste.
EquipmentA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow saute pan; any wide heavy pan will do. The "reducing spatula" is a stiff wooden or silicone spatula — the mixture is thick enough to scorch and needs constant scraping of the bottom.
Chicken jellyRanhofer's No. 103 is a chicken jelly, a stock preparation that sets firm when cold. A few tablespoons of well-reduced, naturally gelatinous chicken stock, or a commercial chicken glace, gives the same setting power and gloss.
Dice sizeThree-sixteenths of an inch is roughly 5 mm, a small dice. Keep the chicken, mushrooms and truffle at that scale or the blocks will not cut cleanly.
Frying"Boiling fat" means deep fat hot enough to colour the batter quickly, somewhere in the region of 350-375F. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds; the filling is already cooked, so you are only setting the batter and heating through, two to three minutes.
TrufflesFour ounces of fresh black truffle is now a luxury out of scale with the rest of the dish. A smaller quantity, or good truffle peelings with a little of their liquor, keeps the intent without the expense.

A Little History

Cromesquis — sometimes anglicised as "kromeskies" — entered French professional cooking in the nineteenth century and the name is generally traced to Polish or Russian sources, arriving by way of the Franco-Russian kitchens that shaped so much of the grande cuisine repertoire. The form is a croquette variant: the same bound salpicon of cooked meat, mushroom and truffle, but wrapped in a sheet of fat and dipped in batter rather than rolled in crumbs. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), gives a whole run of them — beef palates, poultry, crab and crawfish — under Hot Side Dishes. The calf's udder called for here cooks to a bland, supple sheet of fat; its disappearance from the market says more about changes in butchery and offal-eating than about the dish itself.