No. 927

Palmettes of Ham a l'Aquitaine

Palmettes de Jambon a l'Aquitaine

Make with ham mousseline (No.911), and finish the same as for No. 920, only frying the palmettes in oil. Infuse a small stick of cinnamon in Madeira wine, reduce it with half-glaze sauce (No.413), strain, and add mushrooms, truffles, and beef palate all cut in small two-six-teenth inch squares; serve this separately.

← No. 926 Palmettes of Guinea Fowl and Wild Duck, Pala Hot Side Dishes No. 928 Palmettes of Hare and Young Rabbit, Polish →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade, so this entry is really three recipes chained together. Reading it requires the cross-references, and cooking it requires assembling them first.

Follow the chain of numbersNo. 911 is the ham mousseline, No. 920 supplies the finishing method (the reference to "only frying in oil" shows it ends in frying), and No. 413 is half-glaze, i.e. demi-glace. Nothing here is makeable without those three pages in hand.
What a palmette isA small quenelle or croquette named for its palm-leaf outline, breaded and fried. The name describes the shape, not an ingredient; this entry does not say how it was moulded.
"Two-sixteenth inch squares"That is one-eighth of an inch, a shade over 3 mm. Ranhofer commonly gives garnish dice in sixteenths of an inch; the point is uniformity of the dice.
Beef palateThe roof of the ox's mouth, sold blanched and gelatinous, a standard Victorian garnish for its texture rather than its flavour. It is effectively unobtainable at retail now; blanched sweetbread or simply more mushroom and truffle stands in without disturbing the sauce.
Half-glazeDemi-glace: brown espagnole sauce reduced with brown stock until it coats. A good reduced veal stock is the practical substitute, but it must be thick enough to cling to the 3 mm dice.
The cinnamon infusionSteep one small stick in the Madeira, then reduce the wine with the half-glaze and strain, as written; the recipe leaves the cinnamon in through the reduction, so keep the stick small and taste as you go or it can dominate the ham.
Frying in oilThe one stated change from No. 920, which the text implies uses some other fat. Fry hot enough to colour the crumb quickly; the recipe gives no temperature or timing.
ServingThe garnished sauce is served separately, as the recipe directs, rather than poured over the palmettes. The page places it among the book's hot side dishes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the book is built: a spine of base preparations, with dozens of named variations hanging off each one by number. The palmette itself belongs to the high French repertoire of moulded forcemeats — mousselines shaped, poached and dressed in geometric arrangements — a style that filled the hot side-dish course of a service à la russe menu. Names such as à l'Aquitaine in this tradition are generally garnish labels rather than regional attributions; a cook of the period would have read the title chiefly as a promise of a particular sauce and dice. Beef palate, one of the three garnish elements here, appears constantly in nineteenth-century French garnishes and almost nowhere since, a fair index of how much of the offal counter has quietly disappeared.