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Whiting Quenelles
Prepare some whiting forcemeat, and keep it upon ice till required (see WHITING FORCEMEAT). Take two spoons of the size it is intended the quenelles should be, and fill one of them with the forcemeat. Dip the other spoon into boiling water, remove the quenelle with it, and put it in a buttered saucepan. Repeat until there are as many quenelles as are desired. Pour over them some stock, and boil them gently till firm. Take up the quenelles, put them into a dish, pour a little fish sauce round them, and serve. Time to boil the quenelles, about ten minutes.
A short entry that assumes you have already made the forcemeat and know how to shape it between two spoons. Two things carry the dish: the mixture must stay cold, and the poaching liquid must never actually boil.
- "Boil them gently" means poachKeep the stock at a bare shiver, with no more than a wisp of movement at the edges. A true boil tears quenelles apart or blows them hollow. The book's ten minutes suits a moderate spoon-sized quenelle; smaller ones will need less, and they are ready when firm to the fingertip and no longer sticky at the centre.
- Keep the forcemeat on iceThis is not fussiness. A fish forcemeat is an emulsion of protein, fat and liquid that depends on staying cold; if it warms it can break and the quenelles poach out into shreds. Chill the bowl, the spoons and the mixture, and work in small batches.
- "Fish sauce" hereAn English white sauce made on fish stock -- a veloute or a white wine sauce -- not the fermented anchovy condiment of Southeast Asia that now carries the name.
- Which whitingThe book means European whiting (Merlangius merlangus), a lean, mild cod relative. In North America "whiting" is usually silver hake, which works just as well. Any lean white fish — cod, haddock, pollock, sole — makes a comparable forcemeat; oily fish will not.
- The two-spoon methodFill one spoon, smooth the top against the bowl, then dip the second spoon in the hot stock or boiling water and slide it under the mound to lift it free. Dipping is what stops the mixture clinging. A wet teaspoon or a small ice-cream scoop does the same job.
- The buttered saucepanButter the pan so the quenelles do not stick before they set, and lay them in a single layer with room between them; they swell. A wide, shallow sauté pan or straight-sided sauteuse is easier to load and unload than a deep saucepan.
- StockUse a light fish fumet, not a heavy meat stock. Strain and save it afterwards — it has taken on flavour from the quenelles and makes the base for the sauce you pour round them.
- Yield and servingThe recipe fixes neither quantity nor number; you make as many as are desired. They are also the classic garnish for a fish soup or a vol-au-vent, in which case make them small.
A quenelle is a poached dumpling of pounded meat or fish bound with a panada and enriched with egg and cream; the word is generally traced into French from Alsatian German Knodel, dumpling, and the technique belongs to the elaborate French repertoire that English cookery books absorbed through the nineteenth century. The two-spoon shaping and the gentle poach were treated as basic skills, applicable to veal, chicken, game or fish alike -- master the forcemeat and you had garnishes for soups, borders for entrees and a dish in its own right. Whiting was a common choice for a fish forcemeat in Victorian Britain: it was cheap, very lean and mild, took pounding well and set firm; pike came to fill a comparable role in Lyonnaise kitchens. The recipe's brevity is itself a period detail.