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SALMON, IMPERIAL FASHION (Careme's recipe)
The fish being cleaned, throw salt in the inside, and rub some on the outside; three hours after wash it in several waters, drain and wipe it, and fill the interior with a forcemeat of whitings. Keep the fish in its first shape, and lay it in a fish-kettle with mirepoix moistened with two bottles of champagne wine (the head of the salmon should be tied) and as much fish stock. When it boils cover it with a large sheet of strong paper, buttered, and let it boil slowly for an hour, then let it cool in its braise; take it up afterwards on the strainer, remove nearly all the skin from it, and glaze the best side with a light fish glaze, to which you have added some crayfish butter. Slide it carefully upon a napkin on the dish, and surround it with parsley, on which place a row of crayfish; afterwards, with a row of the livers of burbots or carp roes, dressed as usual; when serving, garnish it with eight hatelets of aspics, ornamented with crayfish tails and carp roes; serve in one sauce-boat a white mayonnaise with aspic-jelly, and in another a ravigote of oil, to which add the flesh of a lemon cut into very thin slices, the pips being removed. Serve cold.
This is a full-dress cold buffet piece from Carême's repertoire, and almost every term in it belongs to a professional kitchen of the 1830s. The hinge is the braise: the fish is cooked gently in wine and stock and then left to cool in that liquid, which is what keeps a whole salmon moist and what sets the glaze later.
- Mirepoix, 19th-century senseHere mirepoix means the wet aromatic braising bed Carême used — diced carrot, onion, celery, herbs and often a little ham or bacon, softened in butter — not simply raw diced vegetables. It goes in the bottom of the kettle under the fish.
- Two bottles of champagneTwo bottles is roughly 1.5 litres by modern bottle sizes, matched with an equal volume of fish stock, so something like 3 litres of liquid and a vessel long enough to hold a whole fish. Any dry sparkling or still white wine behaves the same once it simmers; the bubbles contribute nothing.
- Fish kettle and buttered paperA fish kettle is a long lidded pan with a perforated lifting rack (the "strainer" the recipe takes the fish up on). The buttered sheet of strong paper laid over the top keeps the surface of the salmon from drying as it cooks.
- An hour is too longAn hour is a long time -- An hour at a slow boil suits a large whole salmon of the kind this dish assumes. A modern whole salmon of 8-12 lb wants water held at 160-170F and around 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder, then cooling in the liquor. Judge by internal temperature rather than by the clock.
- Forcemeat of whitingsA whiting farce: lean white fish pounded fine and bound, in modern kitchens usually with egg white and cream. Any firm white fish works; pike, haddock or sole are usual substitutes. Stuff loosely, since the farce expands.
- Fish glaze and crayfish butterFish glaze is fumet reduced to a syrup that sets on cooling; crayfish butter is butter pounded with the shells and coral and passed through a sieve, valued for its colour and its shellfish flavour. Brushed over the skinned side they give the lacquered pink finish the dish is built around.
- HateletsHâtelets are ornamental silver skewers, threaded with garnish and set upright in the fish for the table. Small metal or wooden skewers stand in; they are decoration and are removed before eating.
- Burbot liversBurbot liver was prized as a delicacy and is hard to come by now, the fish having vanished from Britain and declined over parts of its former European range. The carp roe alternative the recipe already offers is the practical route.
- Yield and the saucesA whole salmon dressed this way serves 12–20 as a cold centrepiece. The two sauce-boats are a mayonnaise slackened with melted aspic and a ravigote vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, mustard and chopped green herbs, here finished with peeled lemon segments.
Antonin Carême (1784–1833) cooked for Talleyrand, the Prince Regent and the Rothschilds, and more than anyone else codified the grande cuisine that Victorian cookbooks quoted as authority. Dishes like this one belong to his grosses pièces — large cold set pieces glazed, skewered and plinthed for display on a buffet table, where guests saw the whole arrangement before it was carved. The name "imperial fashion" reflects the register rather than any documented imperial commission; the label à l'impériale was used to mark the most lavish treatment of an ingredient. The recipe is reprinted here as a model rather than as a practical family dinner: two bottles of champagne, crayfish butter, aspic hâtelets and burbot livers were beyond most of the households buying a domestic cookery book, but reprinting Carême verbatim showed readers what the top of the profession looked like and taught the technique of braising and glazing a whole fish along the way.