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Grenadins of Chicken, Astor
Have three tender spring chickens of one and a quarter to one and a half pounds each, detach the legs and keep them on a plate, cut off the wings, then carefully lift up the breasts, remove the skin and bones from the breasts, split each breast open without separating, then lay them open on a clean board. Finely chop two ounces raw, lean veal, place in a mortar with an egg yolk and pound to a paste, then rub it through a sieve into a bowl, add two saltspoons salt, half saltspoon cayenne pepper, half saltspoon grated nutmeg, one finely chopped truffle, gradually pour in two tablespoons cream, sharply stirring while adding it, season the breasts with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, spread the force inside the breast, evenly divided , fold them up so as to entirely enclose the force, heat two tablespoons clarified butter in a sauteuse, adding ten well-cleaned, medium-sized, fresh, sliced mushrooms, and cook them for five minutes, frequently tossing meanwhile, lift them up with a skimmer and keep them on a plate. Arrange the breasts in the mushroom pan and gently fry them for four minutes on each side, moisten with one and a half gills good Sauterne wine and two tablespoons good sherry, cover the sauteuse and let them reduce to half the quantity on the range, pour in one and a half gills cream, season with a half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne, shuffle the pan and cook for eight minutes. Prepare six heart-shaped bread croutons of the same size as the grenadins, quarter-inch in thickness, dip them in melted butter, then place them on a tin, set in the oven until they obtain a nice golden colour on both sides, remove, arrange them on a hot dish, star-like, place a grenadin on top of each crouton and keep them hot until required. Mix in a saucepan one ounce butter with tablespoon flour and heat it for half a minute, stirring well meanwhile, then pour the contents of the sauteuse in the pan, continually mix until it comes to a boil, strain the sauce through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan, add the mushrooms and let boil for ten minutes, pour over the grenadins, sprinkle a little chopped truffle over all and serve.
N. B. Remove the feet and second joint bones from the six legs of the three chickens and place them into an earthen jar, adding one sliced carrot, a sliced onion, a crushed bean garlic, branch parsley, branch chervil, six tarragon leaves, sprig thyme, blade mace, bay leaf, one clove, teaspoon allspice, teaspoon whole black pepper and teaspoon salt. Moisten with a half pint claret, two gills water and the juice of half a sound lemon, mix well, cover the pan and keep in the ice box until Saturday's dinner, for chicken-leg dijonnaise. Thoroughly clean the carcasses of three chickens and keep for chicken broth at Saturday's luncheon.
A Delmonico's-style chicken breast dish: a veal-and-truffle forcemeat sealed inside a split supreme, finished in Sauternes, sherry and cream. The measurements are turn-of-the-century restaurant shorthand and the cooking times are generous by modern standards.
- The unitsA gill is half a cup, so a gill and a half is 3/4 cup — that goes for both the wine and the cream. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which makes the forcemeat seasoning half a teaspoon salt and an eighth teaspoon each cayenne and nutmeg.
- Sauteuse and chinoisA sauteuse is a straight- or sloping-sided sauté pan with a lid, wide enough to hold six breasts in one layer without crowding; a 12-inch pan works. The "Chinese strainer" is a chinois, a conical fine-mesh strainer — a fine sieve does the same job.
- GrenadinThe term normally means a small larded fillet of veal. Here it is borrowed for a stuffed, rolled chicken supreme of roughly the same size and shape, which is why the croutons are cut to match.
- Total cooking timeFour minutes a side plus eight minutes in the cream, on modern high-output burners, can dry out a stuffed supreme. Cook to an internal temperature of 165F at the centre of the forcemeat and then hold the breasts warm while the sauce finishes; the veal filling must reach that temperature, so do not shorten the cooking without checking.
- The forcemeatTwo ounces of veal, an egg yolk and two tablespoons of cream is a classic mousseline in miniature. Keep the veal, the mortar and the cream cold and add the cream in a slow stream — warm forcemeat splits and weeps in the pan. A food processor with a chilled bowl replaces the mortar and sieve.
- SauterneThe spelling may point to a sweet Sauternes, but in American usage of this period 'sauterne' was also a generic label for white wine, frequently dry; a bone-dry wine gives a sharper reduction. The two tablespoons of sherry alongside are better dry than a cream sherry.
- TruffleOne chopped fresh black truffle is a considerable expense now. Preserved truffle peelings, or a small quantity of truffle-scented butter stirred into the finished sauce, carries the intent; truffle oil is best kept out of the raw forcemeat, as its aroma does not survive cooking well.
- The croutonsQuarter-inch heart-shaped slices of firm white bread, dipped in melted butter as the recipe directs and baked until golden on both sides. The book gives no oven temperature; a hot oven, around 400F for roughly 8 minutes with a turn, does the job. Day-old bread is best -- fresh crumb soaks up butter and goes greasy.
- The note about SaturdayThis recipe assumes raw chicken legs can sit in a wine marinade in the icebox until later in the week, in a kitchen that expected to use every part of the bird. At 40F, keep raw poultry in marinade no more than two days, and use the carcasses for stock the same day or freeze them.
- YieldSix grenadins from three small chickens — six servings as a course, three as a main.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York. Its cross-references to Saturday's dinner and Saturday's luncheon point to a book organised around daily menus, which is why this recipe ends by telling the cook to hold the legs for Saturday's dinner and the carcasses for Saturday's luncheon. That housekeeping note is the most revealing thing on the page: a professional writing for a household staff, expecting three whole birds to be broken down and every part accounted for across the week. The suffix Astor follows the American hotel habit of naming dishes for prominent patrons and the establishments they backed; the Astor name attached to a good many New York restaurant preparations of the era, and such attributions are generally honorific rather than evidence that the family had anything to do with the cooking. The dish itself is straightforwardly Escoffier-period French: a mousseline forcemeat, a wine reduction mounted with cream and a butter-flour liaison, and fried croutons cut in hearts to lift each portion off the plate.