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Quenelles of Cod, Salmon, Etc
Take the skin from a thick slice of salmon or cod, scrape the flesh with a spoon, and rub it through a wire sieve upon a dish. Pound six ounces of the fish thus prepared, with three ounces of butter, and four ounces of panada; season with salt and cayenne, and then add, gradually, one whole egg, and the yolks of two others. Pound the mixture again, and put it on ice or in a cool place till it is wanted. Any kind of fish forcemeat may be made in the same way.
A classic fish forcemeat in the French manner, given here as a base preparation rather than a finished dish. The proportions are the point: 6 oz fish to 3 oz butter to 4 oz panada, bound with egg.
- Panada is the missing recipePanada here means a thick paste of bread or flour cooked with milk or stock and dried out over heat until it leaves the pan clean, then cooled. Cassell's assumes you have made it separately; without it the mixture will not hold. A cooled flour panada is dense enough that roughly half a cup comes near the 4 oz called for, but weigh it rather than measure it.
- Weights, not volumesEverything in this recipe is by weight and should stay that way, since the ratio of fish to butter to panada is what determines whether the quenelle sets or falls apart. Use a scale.
- The food processor replaces the mortarThe scraping, sieving and pounding are all in service of a perfectly smooth paste. A processor does it in a minute or two: pulse the raw fish cold, add butter, then panada, then the eggs one at a time. Stop as soon as it is smooth, since over-working warms the mixture and it will separate.
- Keep everything coldThis is the hinge. Butter-and-egg forcemeat breaks if it warms, which is why the original sends it to the ice. Chill the fish, the butter and the bowl, and rest the finished paste at least an hour in the refrigerator before shaping.
- Test one before you shape the restPoach a teaspoonful in barely simmering salted water. If it disintegrates, work in a little more panada; if it is rubbery and tight, more butter. This test is standard practice and costs nothing.
- Cooking the quenellesShape with two wet spoons and poach in water or fish stock held just below a simmer, about 8-10 minutes for a tablespoon-sized quenelle, until they float and feel firm. Water at a rolling boil tears them apart.
- CayenneThe recipe gives no quantity. Use it as background heat rather than for spiciness: a pinch for this quantity.
- YieldThe quantities given make about a pound of forcemeat once the eggs are counted, enough for roughly 16 small quenelles: a first course for four, or a garnish for a larger fish dish.
Quenelle is generally traced to the German Knödel, a dumpling, and the technique reached the English kitchen through the professional French tradition rather than through domestic cookery. Forcemeat of this kind was a building block, used to stuff, to garnish clear soups, to fill vol-au-vents, or shaped and poached as a course in itself. The pounding, sieving and repeated pounding that make the recipe read as laborious were the only route to a smooth emulsion before mechanical mixers. Salmon and cod appear together here; the closing line that "any kind of fish forcemeat may be made in the same way" is the real instruction, the recipe being a formula rather than a dish.