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Three Eggs (Ounces of Butter)
Three ounces of Butter.
Breadcrumbs. Pepper, Salt, and Mustard.
For ten or twelve persons take two and a half pounds of salmon, cut it crossways in slices about a quarter of an inch thick, and season with pepper, salt, and mustard. Have some raw egg beaten on a plate, and to each egg add one ounce of warm butter. Dip the slices of salmon in this and then into freshly made breadcrumbs, and fry in oil, butter, or fat for six to eight minutes. Then take up and arrange each slice in a square Neapolitan paper. Dish up in pile, and serve for dinner or luncheon with Suédoise sauce handed round.
Filets de Soles en fers à Cheval. (Fillets of Soles in Horseshoe Moulds.) COLD FISH ENTRÉE.
Ingredients.
One large or two small Soles.
Quarter of a pint of picked Shrimps.
One teaspoonful of Anchovy Paste.
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
Half a pint of Béchamel Sauce.
About a pint of Aspic Jelly.
This page runs two items together: a finished recipe for egg-and-crumbed salmon slices, and the ingredient list for a following cold sole entrée whose method is not on this page. The notes below deal chiefly with the salmon.
- Yield and portionsTwo and a half pounds of salmon for ten or twelve is a light serving by modern standards — between 3 and 4 oz raw per head depending on numbers, sensible when the dish is one of several courses. For a main course, count on rather more fish per person and scale the coating accordingly.
- The egg-and-butter coatingThis is the hinge. Whisking an ounce of warm — not hot — butter into each beaten egg gives a richer, more adhesive coat than egg alone and browns faster in the pan. Let the butter cool to just liquid or it will scramble the egg on the plate.
- Frying timeSix to eight minutes will overcook quarter-inch salmon slices badly. At that thickness two to three minutes a side in shallow fat is ample; the crumb is the guide, and the fish should still be faintly translucent at the centre.
- MustardListed dry with the pepper and salt, so almost certainly mustard powder used as a seasoning rather than prepared mustard from a jar, though the recipe does not say so. A very small quantity is enough over two and a half pounds of fish.
- Neapolitan papersSmall paper cases, here square, each slice being set in its own before the pile is dished up; the effect is presentational. Cut parchment squares serve the same purpose, or simply pile the slices on a folded napkin.
- Suédoise sauceSuédoise sauce -- A cold sauce of the period, usually a mayonnaise base with apple purée and grated horseradish. The recipe has it "handed round", i.e. served separately rather than poured over.
- The sole fragmentQuarter of a pint of shrimps is 5 fl oz, about half a cup; half a pint of Béchamel is 10 fl oz. "Fers à cheval" indicates horseshoe-shaped moulds — but no method is given here, so the dish cannot be completed from this page alone.
Salmon cut crossways into thin slices, crumbed and fried, belongs to the repertoire of "cutlets" and "collops" that let an expensive fish stretch across a large table. The paper cases, the French-titled cold entrée that follows, the counting of portions for ten or twelve and the direction that sauce be handed round separately all suggest a book written for a household with a cook and a full dinner service. Suédoise sauce — the name simply means "Swedish" — is one of a family of cold apple-and-horseradish sauces drawn from French professional cookery.