No. 924

Varsovian Palmettes

Palmettes a la Varsovienne

To be made with a chicken mousseline forcemeat (No. 86), mixed with a salpicon of truffles, tongue, and mushrooms, cut in eighth of an inch squares, having two ounces of each for every pound of forcemeat; fill the molds, poach, unmold, and bread-crumb them, then fry in clarified butter. Garnish with favor frills (No. 10), range them on a napkin, and send to the table with a sauce-boat of veloute sauce (No. 415), with raw fine herbs added.

← No. 923 Primatice Palmettes Hot Side Dishes No. 925 Palmettes of Fat Livers Delmontes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand, assuming you have the numbered building blocks in hand. Once the forcemeat and the salpicon are made, the dish is straightforward, but the poaching is where it fails or succeeds.

Poach gently, never boilA chicken mousseline is egg white, cream and pounded breast meat; brought near a boil it curdles and weeps butterfat, and the palmettes turn grainy. Set the filled molds in a water bath held at 170-180F and cook until just firm to the touch, roughly 15-20 minutes for small molds.
What the mousseline forcemeat isNo. 86 is a mousseline forcemeat of the standard type: raw white chicken meat pounded to a paste with egg white, seasoned, then worked over ice with cream until it holds a soft shape. Check Ranhofer's No. 86 for his own proportions. A food processor does the pounding; keep everything cold and add the cream in stages, or the emulsion breaks.
The salpicon proportionTwo ounces each of truffle, cooked tongue and mushroom per pound of forcemeat means six ounces of garnish to sixteen of mousse. Cut them to a true eighth-inch dice, and use cooked mushrooms squeezed dry; raw ones will bleed water into the mousse as it sets.
Tongue and truffle todayPickled or braised beef tongue is still sold by butchers and is the intended salty red note. Fresh black truffle is a luxury purchase; a good jarred truffle, drained, is the practical substitute, and truffle oil is not.
Palmette moldsRanhofer says only 'the molds'; the name suggests a small palm-leaf or oval shape, but he does not describe them. Buttered dariole molds, silicone half-oval molds or even small ramekins will serve, allowing that the shape gives the dish its name.
Chill before breadingThe recipe unmolds and crumbs in one breath, but warm mousseline is fragile. Cool the poached palmettes thoroughly, then flour, egg and crumb them so the coating grips and the shape survives the pan.
Clarified butter, moderate heatClarified butter is used because whole butter's milk solids scorch. Fry at moderate heat until evenly golden, two to three minutes a side; the interior is already cooked and only needs warming through.
Favor frills and the sauceNo. 10 refers to the paper frills of period service and can be left out entirely. "Raw fine herbs" means finely chopped chervil, tarragon, parsley and chives stirred into the hot velouté at the last moment so they stay green.
YieldA pound of forcemeat plus salpicon makes about twelve small palmettes, enough for six as a hot side dish or four as a light main course.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and it is typical of the book's "hot side dishes" -- small, molded, elaborately garnished preparations served in the middle of a long service. Mousseline forcemeat itself belongs to the nineteenth-century French professional tradition, whose development is often traced to Car".u00eame and his successors: lean white meat pounded with egg white and lightened with cream, a technique that gave cooks a smooth, pale, moldable paste for quenelles, boudins and dishes like this one. The name "à la Varsovienne" simply means Warsaw-style, one of dozens of geographical tags in the period's garnish vocabulary; such labels are generally understood to have been largely conventional, signaling a particular set of garnishes to kitchen staff rather than necessarily indicating any Polish origin. The truffle, tongue and mushroom salpicon flecking the mousse is the real signature here, and the paper frills Ranhofer calls for are a reminder that these dishes were built to be looked at on a napkin-lined platter before they were eaten.