Home › The World's Kitchen › Chicken Braise, Demi-Deuil
Chicken Braise, Demi-Deuil
Cut the head and feet off, drain, wipe, singe and truss a fine, tender, two-and-half-pound Philadelphia chicken and place it in a small saucepan with two tablespoons butter and fry for ten minutes, that is, to a nice light brown; add one gill sherry, one pint hot beef broth or hot water. Place a mirepoix, on the sides of the chicken. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, well distributed. Cover the pan and cook for ten minutes. Then set the pan in the oven to roast for forty-five minutes. Remove and keep warm. Heat in a small pan half ounce melted butter with two tablespoons flour, briskly stirring while cooking for two minutes; then strain the chicken gravy through a Chinese strainer into this pan and briskly whisk while cooking for three minutes; add twelve thin slices of truffles, six sliced heads canned mushrooms and half ounce cooked beef tongue cut into julienne strips; boil for one minute, pour the whole over the chicken and serve with six timbales of rice arranged around the chicken.
A braised-then-roasted chicken finished in a truffle velouté, written for a cook who already knows the classical shorthand. The instructions leave out an oven temperature and assume French kitchen vocabulary throughout.
- The hinge: don't burn the fondThe ten minutes of frying in butter is what colors the bird and builds the browned base the sauce depends on. Keep the heat moderate and turn the chicken so it takes light brown all over rather than scorching on one side; a burnt fond will carry bitterness straight into the finished gravy.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. For a covered pan already at a simmer, 350F for the stated forty-five minutes suits a bird of this size; check that the thigh reaches 165F rather than trusting the clock.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The pint of broth is a US pint, two cups.
- MirepoixThe book expects you to know it: roughly diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a bay leaf and thyme, tucked alongside the bird to perfume the braising liquid. It is strained out with the gravy, so cut it coarse.
- Philadelphia chickenA market designation of the period for a plump, well-fattened young bird of good quality; the trade reputation (as with the better-known Philadelphia capon) was for careful fattening, sometimes described as milk-feeding. Any 2 1/2 lb chicken or small roaster works; the head and feet will already be off.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. A regular fine sieve does the same job. Strain the braising liquid into the cooked roux and whisk hard to keep it smooth.
- Heads of mushroomsCaps, from a can of button mushrooms, sliced. Fresh sauteed cremini or button caps are better and need only a brief cook before they go into the sauce.
- TrufflesTwelve thin slices of black truffle is the whole point of the dish and the source of its name. Truffle in oil or brine is the practical substitute; truffle oil alone will not give the same effect, since it is aroma without substance.
- Timbales of riceRice packed into small buttered dariole or ramekin molds and turned out. Plain steamed rice, firm enough to hold shape, pressed into a teacup and inverted, does it.
- YieldSix rice timbales are called for, but a 2 1/2 lb bird realistically serves four.
Demi-deuil means "half mourning" — the black of truffles against the pale flesh and pale sauce, the color scheme of a widow partway out of full black. The name is generally traced to Lyon, where poularde demi-deuil, with truffle slices slid under the skin of a poached fat hen, became the signature of the city's meres and later of Lyonnais restaurant cooking. The version here is a restaurant adaptation rather than the Lyonnaise original: braised and roasted instead of poached, sauced with a velouté made from its own gravy, and garnished with tongue and canned mushrooms alongside the truffles. That combination suggests the American hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, where French technique was expected but canned goods were unembarrassing.