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Three Truffles (Wash and dry the salmon put it)
Wash and dry the salmon; put it in a stewpan with a pint and a half of stock, one carrot sliced, one onion with a clove stuck in it, the sherry, one ounce of butter, bouquet garni, and a few peppercorns; sprinkle a little salt over it, cover it and let it simmer slowly for about an hour. When it is cooked take up the salmon, strain the stock it was cooked in into a small saucepan, add the Espagnole and tomato sauces, let it boil for a few minutes; skim well, stir in one ounce of butter, a teaspoonful of anchovy paste and the juice of a lemon, then pass it through a tammy cloth. Dish up the salmon; take off the skin; garnish the top and sides with twenty-four small fish quenelles poached, and made from the "Whiting Farce" recipe, twelve cooked mushrooms, eight cooked oysters and eight crayfish tails or prawns and the truffles sliced. Sauce over gently, and serve the rest of the sauce in a tureen.
A braised whole piece of salmon in the grand service style, finished with a compound brown sauce and a garnish of quenelles, mushrooms, oysters, shellfish and truffle. The page has been separated from its ingredient list, so several quantities have to be inferred.
- The missing quantitiesThe title looks like a fragment of the original ingredient list, and the method calls for "the truffles" without ever stating how many. The weight of salmon and the amount of sherry are likewise absent from this page; for a garnish of this scale something like a 3-4 lb centre cut or tail piece and a gill (5 fl oz) of sherry would suit.
- An hour is far too longAn hour is long -- An hour of slow simmering suits a large whole fish rather than a moderate cut, and even then it risks overshooting. Salmon is done at about 120-125F at the thickest point, which for a 3-4 lb piece in barely trembling liquid is roughly 25-35 minutes. Judge by temperature, not by the clock.
- Keep the liquid stillThe hinge of the dish is that the stock must never actually boil around the fish. A rolling simmer squeezes white albumen out of the flesh and breaks the piece up before you can lift it whole. Hold the pan at a bare shiver, lid on.
- Espagnole and tomato sauceEspagnole is the classic brown sauce built on a brown roux and veal stock, reduced over hours; a good reduced brown stock or demi-glace stands in. Quantities are again in the lost list; roughly equal parts Espagnole and tomato sauce, together about half the volume of the strained cooking liquor, is a reasonable starting point.
- Tammy clothA tammy is a worsted straining cloth that the sauce was forced through with two people twisting the ends. A fine chinois lined with damp muslin does the same job, and the butter and lemon should go in off the heat so the sauce stays glossy rather than splitting.
- Whiting farce quenellesThe farce recipe is elsewhere in the book; such fish farces are typically pounded white fish with a panada, butter and egg. Twenty-four small quenelles means teaspoon-sized ovals, poached in barely simmering salted water for 4-5 minutes. Any lean white fish works.
- Oysters and crayfish"Cooked oysters" here means poached in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, about a minute. Anything longer and they shrink and turn rubbery on the plate. Crayfish tails or prawns should be added at the last moment for the same reason.
- Anchovy pasteAnchovy paste sold in tubes today can be very salty and concentrated. Start with half a teaspoon, taste, and remember the sauce also carries reduced stock and the strained braising liquor.
- YieldAs written this would serve eight to ten as a formal fish course; the eight oysters and eight crayfish tails point to eight portions, though the twelve mushrooms do not divide evenly.
This belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian repertoire of saumon braisé, in which a whole fish or a large cut was braised in stock and wine and then dressed with a composed garnish whose name usually identified the dish. Truffles, quenelles, oysters, mushrooms and crayfish tails are the standard vocabulary of that garnishing system, codified in French professional kitchens and carried into British country-house and club cookery by chefs trained in it; the anchovy in a brown sauce for fish is the older English habit surviving inside a French structure, and anchovy appears similarly in sauce Génoise. Books of "high class cookery" were aimed at cooks in large private households and at the schools that trained them, where the arrangement on the dish mattered as much as the flavour. The odd title of this page appears to be an artefact of the original ingredient list having been separated from the method.