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Ingredients for the Quenelles
Quarter ounce of Butter.
Half ounce of Flour.
Quarter gill of Stock.
Two and a half ounces of Whiting.
One yolk of Egg.
For method see Quenelles, page 128, using teaspoons instead of dessert-spoons. Filets de Rougets à l'Italienne.
Take your mullets and fillet them, making two fillets only of each mullet. Six mullets make a nice dish. Butter your dish, lay the fillets neatly on, sprinkle over a little salt, lemon-juice, and pepper. Cover them with a buttered paper, and place in a moderate oven till done. Drain any moisture from the dish into the sauce. Serve with Sauce Italienne poured over the mullet.
Two linked items: a small batch of fish quenelles meant as a garnish, and the mullet dish they garnish. The quantities for the quenelles are tiny because they are decoration, not a course.
- Quarter gillA British gill is 5 fl oz, so a quarter gill is about 1.25 fl oz — roughly 2 tablespoons, or 35 ml. The whole quenelle mixture comes to a few ounces, enough for perhaps a dozen teaspoon-sized dumplings.
- The panada is the hingeThe butter, flour and stock are cooked to a stiff paste (a panada) and cooled completely before the pounded whiting and yolk go in. A warm panada will slacken the mixture and the quenelles will disintegrate in the poaching liquid. Poach one as a tester before shaping the rest.
- Teaspoons, not dessert-spoonsThe quenelles are moulded between two wetted teaspoons, giving neat small ovals about the size of an olive. Poach them in barely trembling salted water or fish stock — water at a rolling boil breaks them.
- WhitingWhiting was a common quenelle fish in British kitchens because it is lean, white and pounds smooth. Any lean white fish works: pollock, haddock, sole, or cod. Oily fish will not set cleanly. A food processor replaces the mortar in about thirty seconds; do not let the mixture warm up.
- RougetsRed mullet, sold in Britain and around the Mediterranean, unrelated to grey mullet. Small fish of 6-8 oz each, hence two fillets per fish and six fish to a dish. Ask for them scaled and filleted with the pin bones out; the skin is part of the appeal and should be left on.
- Moderate oven350F / 175C. Red mullet fillets are thin — 8 to 12 minutes is usually enough, and they are done when the flesh has just turned opaque at the thickest point. The buttered paper is a cartouche laid directly on the fish; baking parchment does the same job.
- Sauce ItalienneIn the classical repertoire this is a demi-glace or velouté finished with a duxelles of finely chopped mushroom and shallot, white wine, tomato and chopped herbs. The pan juices drained from the fish are what tie it to the dish, so do not skip that step.
- YieldTwelve fillets serves six as a fish course, three or four as a main.
Books titled for "high-class" cookery were aimed at the cook-housekeeper in a substantial late-Victorian or Edwardian household, and at the cookery schools that trained her; the French headings and the assumption that a fish course is one of several are both marks of that world. The quenelle — a poached forcemeat dumpling bound with a flour-and-butter panada — came into British kitchens directly from French practice, and in this period it was as often a garnish as a dish, ranged around a platter to give height and contrast. Red mullet had a particular standing in classical French cooking: it is generally said that the fish was traditionally cooked ungutted, the liver being prized, and Escoffier's contemporaries treated it as a delicacy rather than everyday fish. The instruction to drain the moisture from the baking dish into the sauce is the practical heart of the method.