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Darne de Saumon à la Chambord
(Middle Cut of Salmon Braised and Garnished with Quenelles of Fish, Oysters, Prawns, etc.) Ingredients.
Four pounds of the middle cut of Salmon.
Twenty-four Fish Quenelles. Eight Crayfish. Eight Oysters. Twelve button Mushrooms. One pint and a half of Stock, one Onion, Carrot, Clove. One gill of Sherry, two ounces of Butter, a Bouquet Garni. One gill of Espagnole Sauce, and one of Tomato Sauce. One teaspoonful of Anchovy Paste.
The juice of a Lemon.
This entry gives the ingredients for the braise and its sauce but leaves the method to the cook, as was common in a book written for students who had already been taught the technique. The following fills in what the list assumes.
- What is missingThere is no method here, and no quantity for the quenelles, oysters or prawns of the title. Treat this as a shopping list for a dish you already know how to build: the darne is braised on a bed of aromatics, the strained liquor is reduced into the sauce, and the garnish is cooked separately and arranged around the fish at the last moment.
- Gills and pintsA British gill is 5 fl oz, about 150 ml, so a gill each of sherry, espagnole and tomato sauce is roughly two-thirds of a cup apiece. The pint and a half of stock is Imperial: 30 fl oz, about 850 ml.
- The stockUse fish stock, not meat stock, however brown the sauce is meant to be. A darne braised in beef stock tastes of beef; the point of the braise is that the liquor is reduced and returned to the fish.
- Braising a darneThe recipe gives no method or oven setting at all; on the usual practice for a darne, sit the piece on the sliced onion and carrot with the bouquet and clove, add stock and sherry to come about halfway up, cover with buttered paper and lid, and cook in a moderate oven -- around 325-350F in modern terms. A four-pound centre cut needs roughly 35-45 minutes. Modern kitchens often take salmon off at 120-125F at the bone, which is below the 145F generally recommended for fish; salmon held to the old standard of flaking freely will be drier.
- The sauceEspagnole plus tomato sauce plus reduced fish braising liquor is the classic brown fish sauce, sharpened at the end with anchovy and lemon. Add the lemon juice off the heat, and taste before salting: anchovy paste is salty, and so is a reduced stock.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold. Older pastes are often said to have been saltier and firmer than modern tubes, though the difference is hard to pin down; two or three anchovy fillets mashed to a paste give much the same effect if you cannot find it.
- Oysters and prawnsBoth go in at the end. Oysters poached in their own liquor need about two minutes, until the frills curl; longer and they turn to rubber. Cooked prawns need only to be warmed through in the sauce.
- QuenellesFish forcemeat pounded with panada and cream, shaped between two spoons and poached in barely trembling salted water for 8-10 minutes. Make them small, no larger than a walnut, and poach them ahead.
- YieldFour pounds of salmon on the bone serves eight generously as a main course, more as one of several courses in a long menu of the kind this book was written for.
Chambord is one of the great nineteenth-century garnishes, named for the château in the Loire valley and associated with the grand cuisine of the period, though the link to Carême personally is looser than is often said. In its full form it belonged to a whole braised carp, glazed with its own reduced liquor and ringed with quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, soft roes and crayfish, the whole thing presented on a socle as a centrepiece. A darne of salmon is the practical domestic descendant: the same brown braise and the same lavish border, but on a cut of fish a household cook could buy and a household oven could hold. The presence of espagnole and tomato sauce in a fish dish looks odd now, but brown sauces on fish were routine in the classical repertoire, and the anchovy and lemon at the end are there to keep the whole thing from tasting like a meat dish. Its appearance in a cookery book of this period reflects how thoroughly French terminology and French technique had been absorbed into British professional training by the turn of the century.