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Fish Mousselines
Mince enough uncooked white fish to make two cups, add one cup of soft bread crumbs and one-half cup of cream.
Press through a colander, season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, a suspicion of mace and Worcestershire sauce. Fold in carefully the beaten whites of four eggs.
Turn into buttered molds (round bottomed ones) and steam one-half hour. Turn out on separate plates, surround with the sauce and drop tiny balls of boiled potato in the sauce. For sauce, make a stock of the fish bones and add it to two tablespoons of butter and two of flour cooked together. There should be one and one-half cups of stock. Add one-half cup of cream and when boiling add salt, pepper, and one tablespoon of grated horse-radish soaked in lemon juice.
A classic quenelle-style forcemeat, lightened with beaten egg white rather than the more usual whole eggs. The technique is simple but the texture depends entirely on keeping everything cold and not overworking the mixture.
- The hinge: keep it coldThe fish, cream and bowl should all be refrigerator-cold when the mixture is made, or the cream separates and the mousseline steams out grainy and weeping. Chill the puree again before folding in the whites if the kitchen is warm.
- Colander to food processor"Press through a colander" is the period method for getting a smooth paste. A food processor does it in thirty seconds: pulse the fish to a paste, add the soaked crumbs and cream, then sieve if you want it very fine.
- Fish to useAny lean white fish works — cod, haddock, pollock, sole, pike. Two cups minced is roughly 12 oz to 1 lb of skinned fillet. Oily fish (salmon, mackerel) will overwhelm the mace and horseradish.
- Soft bread crumbsThese are fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dry packaged crumbs, which would drink the cream and stiffen the mixture. Soak them in the half cup of cream for a few minutes before combining.
- A suspicion of maceMace is the outer coating of the nutmeg seed, sold ground; a suspicion means about 1/8 teaspoon for this quantity. Nutmeg is a fair substitute at slightly less.
- MoldsRound-bottomed molds mean small dariole molds or timbales; buttered 4-oz ramekins, custard cups or even a muffin tin serve. Fill about three-quarters full and cover loosely with foil so condensation does not pit the surface.
- Steaming and donenessThirty minutes suits full-size darioles; small ramekins are done in 18-25 minutes. Go by feel and temperature — the center should be just set and springy, about 145F. Overcooked mousselines turn spongy and shrink from the mold.
- The sauceThis is a velouté: cook the butter and flour together without coloring, whisk in 1 1/2 cups hot fish stock, then the cream. If you have no bones, a light stock or even bottled clam juice diluted with water will carry it. Add the horseradish at the end and do not boil it hard afterward, or it loses its bite.
- YieldSix small molds, or four generous ones — a first course rather than a main. Boil and cool the potato balls in advance; a melon baller or small parisienne scoop cuts them from peeled boiled potatoes.
Mousselines are the refined descendants of the quenelle, the pounded fish or meat forcemeat that French cooking had been making since at least the eighteenth century; the name simply borrows from mousseline, muslin, for something light and fine. A dish like this offered a way to serve fish that looked like restaurant work, could be molded ahead, and stretched a modest amount of fillet with bread and cream. The horseradish sauce and the dash of Worcestershire are the Anglo-American accent on an otherwise classic French formula, and the tiny potato balls floating in the sauce are pure turn-of-the-century garnishing, when a plate was expected to show evidence of labor.