No. 932

Palmettes of Snipe with Truffles a la Osborn

Palmettes de Becassines aux Truffes a la Osborn

Have half a pound of snipe or game quenelle forcemeat (No.91), diluted with two gills of espagnole (No.414); let it get cold on the ice, and beat into it the value of a pint of whipped cream, adding two ounces of truffles cut into one-eighth inch squares. Fill the molds described in article No. 920, poach, unmold, egg and bread-crumb the palmettes, then fry them a fine color, drain, dress and trim with favor frills (No.10). Serve separately an espagnole sauce (No.414), reduced with a snipe fumet sauce (No.397) with chopped truffles added.

← No. 931 Palmettes of Quails or Partridges, African Hot Side Dishes No. 933 Palmettes of Turkey a la Bearnaise →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stocked sauce station, so most of the work here is in the cross-references. Read it as a game mousseline shaped in molds, poached, then crumbed and fried.

The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of espagnole is one cup. "The value of a pint of whipped cream" most likely means a pint measured after whipping — roughly one cup of liquid cream — though the text does not say so outright.
The hinge: test before you moldHalf a pound of forcemeat loosened with a cup of sauce and a pint of whipped cream is a very slack mixture, and if it is too slack the palmettes will not survive unmolding, let alone frying. Poach a teaspoonful in barely simmering water first; if it does not hold a clean shape, hold back some of the cream.
Espagnole and fumetEspagnole is the old brown mother sauce — brown roux, veal stock, mirepoix and tomato, reduced for hours. A good demi-glace stands in for it. The snipe fumet is simply a hard-reduced stock made from the birds' bones and trimmings, used here to sharpen the sauce rather than to thicken it.
Poaching temperaturePoach the filled molds in water held just below a simmer, barely trembling; Ranhofer gives no temperature. A true simmer will inflate and split a cream-lightened forcemeat.
MoldsThe molds are described in article No. 920, not here. Small oval dariole molds, silicone shell molds, or even generously buttered muffin cups will do; keep them shallow so the centers set at the same rate as the edges.
FryingFry the egged and crumbed palmettes at 350–360F just until the crust colors, two to three minutes. They are already cooked through, and hotter fat will burst the crumb before it browns.
TrufflesTwo ounces is a generous amount by modern prices. Preserved black truffles packed in their own liquor were common in kitchens of this period; canned or jarred Tuber melanosporum is the honest equivalent, and the liquor belongs in the sauce.
SnipeSnipe is a legal game bird in season but is not sold commercially anywhere you are likely to shop. Quail, wood pigeon or the leg meat of any dark-fleshed game bird gives the right character; see No. 931, which is the same preparation with quail or partridge.
Yield and serviceExpect twelve to sixteen small palmettes — a hot side dish for eight to ten in Ranhofer's sequence of courses, or a first course for six. The "favor frills" are paper cuffs, decorative only, and can be skipped.

A Little History

Palmette means little palm leaf, and it describes the mold rather than the mixture: a fan-shaped case of forcemeat that arrived at table among the hot side dishes. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, built The Epicurean (1894) as a numbered system, which is why this entry is barely a paragraph long — the forcemeat, the espagnole and the fumet all live elsewhere in the book and are simply called up by number. The "à la Osborn" is typical of his habit of attaching a patron's name to a dish, though the specific dedication is not documented in the book itself. Snipe belongs to the same period taste: a tiny, strongly flavored wading bird that appeared regularly on American hotel menus of the 1880s and 90s, valued precisely because its dark, almost livery flesh could carry a truffled brown sauce without disappearing under it.