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Salmon Au Court Bouillon
Draw and clean a small salmon, score the sides pretty deep; season with salt, pepper, a few cloves, a little nutmeg, some sliced onions, chives, parsley, sliced lemon, two or three bay-leaves, and some basil. Work up a pound of butter in a little flour, and put it in the belly of the fish. Wrap the salmon in a napkin, bind it with a pack-thread, and put it into a sufficiently large fish-kettle. Pour over it equal parts of wine (red or white), water, and vinegar, in quantities sufficient to boil it, and set it over a quick fire. When it is done enough, which will be in twenty to thirty minutes, according to size, take it off, and keep simmering slowly at the side until you are ready to serve. Then take up the fish, take it out of the napkin, and lay it on another in the dish you intend to serve it in. Garnish with parsley.
A whole poached salmon in the old French manner, where the fish is cooked in an acidulated wine bath rather than plain water. Most of the recipe translates directly; the proportions and the timing are what need attention.
- Court bouillon is the liquid, not the dishThe name refers to the "short broth" — the aromatic wine, water and vinegar bath the fish cooks in. Here it is mixed raw around the salmon rather than simmered first, so the onion, bay and basil give a lighter flavour than a pre-simmered court bouillon would.
- The vinegar is heavy by modern tasteEqual parts wine, water and vinegar makes a fiercely sharp bath. Later court bouillons generally use far less vinegar, or lemon juice in its place. If you follow the original ratio, expect the skin and outer flesh to taste distinctly pickled.
- A pound of butterA great deal of butter for the "small salmon" the recipe specifies, and much of it simply melts into the cooking liquor. For a 3-4 lb salmon, 4 oz worked with a tablespoon of flour into a paste is ample in the cavity.
- "A quick fire"The recipe wants high heat and liquid enough to boil the fish. If you would rather the flesh stayed intact, use the high heat only to bring the liquid up, then hold it at a bare shiver instead of a rolling boil, which tears the flesh and drives out albumin.
- TimingTwenty to thirty minutes is right for a small whole fish, but judge by thickness rather than the clock — roughly 8-10 minutes per inch at the deepest point, to an internal 125-130F at the backbone. The instruction to hold it "simmering slowly at the side" until serving will overcook it; once done, pull the kettle off the heat and let the fish rest in the warm liquor.
- Napkin and pack-threadA double layer of cheesecloth or muslin tied with kitchen twine, leaving long ends to lift by, does exactly the same job. It keeps the scored sides from breaking up and lets you land the fish whole.
- Fish kettleA long lidded pan with a perforated rack. Without one, use a deep roasting tin across two burners, or curl the fish in a wide stockpot; it needs enough liquid to cover, which is why the recipe is vague about quantities.
- ServingGood hot with melted butter or a green sauce, and equally good cold the next day, when the wine and aromatics have set into the flesh. A 3-4 lb salmon serves six to eight.
Court bouillon — usually explained as "short broth", short in the sense of quickly made rather than a long-simmered stock, though the sense of "court" here is not settled — was a common French treatment for large whole fish, and nineteenth-century English cookery books took it up readily. The acidulated bath firms the flesh and seasons the fish from the outside in a way plain salted water cannot. The pound of butter and flour packed into the belly is an older, more baroque touch, closer to eighteenth-century practice than to the leaner poaching that Escoffier's generation would settle on. Salmon at this date was a seasonal luxury of the spring and summer rivers, and a whole poached fish presented on a napkin, garnished only with parsley, was a familiar centrepiece for a cold buffet or a summer supper table.