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Two Yolks of Eggs (One teaspoonful of Anchovy)
One teaspoonful of Anchovy Paste.
Two teaspoonfuls of Capers.
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
One small bunch of Parsley and Herbs (bouquet).
Wash and wipe the fish well, place it in a stewpan, season with pepper and salt; add velouté sauce, white wine, chopped shalots and bouquet garni. Set it to simmer slowly until the fish is done; baste occasionally. Put the fish on a dish and keep warm. Reduce the sauce until you obtain the desired consistency. Remove the herbs, add the yolks of eggs, work in the butter and pass through a tammy. Return to a smaller stewpan, add the anchovy paste, chopped parsley and capers, stir a few minutes over the fire, and pour over the fish.
Filets de Merlans frite à la Tyrolienne. (Fried Fillets of Whiting.) Ingredients.
This is a page from a professional kitchen manual, and it assumes you already have velouté in the reach-in and know what a tammy is. Note also that the ingredient list has been cut short in the original printing — quantities for the fish itself, the wine, the velouté and the butter are missing, so you are working from proportions rather than a fixed formula.
- The hinge: do not boil the yolksOnce the yolks go into the reduced sauce it must not come back to a simmer or it will scramble and break. Pull the pan to the side of the heat, or work over a low flame, and stir constantly until the sauce coats a spoon.
- What velouté means hereA blond roux slackened with fish stock, simmered and skimmed. For a fish dish it should be a fish velouté, not chicken; the reduction of the braising liquid at the end is what carries the flavour.
- TammyA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force sauce through. A fine chinois or a conical strainer pressed with a ladle does the same job. Strain after the yolks are in but before the sauce goes back on the heat.
- "Work in the butter"This is monter au beurre: butter in small pieces, worked in off the heat until glossy. The book gives no quantity for the butter, so judge it by the sauce.
- ShalotsShallots, chopped fine; "shalot" is one of several spellings current in cookery books of the period. They go in raw with the wine and cook down in the braising liquid.
- Anchovy paste and capersBoth are salty and both go in at the very end. Season the fish lightly at the start and check the sauce only after they are in, or the dish will be oversalted. Capers should be rinsed if packed in salt.
- Bouquet garniParsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, or wrapped in a leek leaf. Tie it long enough to fish out easily, since it must come out before the yolks go in.
- Cooking the fishBarely cover with liquid and keep it at a bare tremble rather than a simmer. The book's "simmer slowly" is the important part — a rolling boil breaks the fish apart before the sauce is ready. The book names no fish here and gives no cooking time, so judge by the flesh.
- YieldAs written this is a service portion of sauce for one dish of fish; the book gives no number of covers.
The method here is the classic braisé au vin blanc treatment of fish that runs through nineteenth-century French professional cookery and into the English grand-hotel kitchens that borrowed it wholesale: cook the fish in a small amount of wine and velouté, then use the cooking liquid itself as the base of the sauce. The finish — reduce, liaison of egg yolks, butter, strain — is the same skeleton behind sauce vin blanc and its many named descendants, and the additions of anchovy, capers and parsley are what give a particular version its name. Anchovy in particular was an English signature; anchovy paste and essence were staples of the Victorian store cupboard, used the way a modern cook reaches for fish sauce. That the page runs straight on into Filets de Merlans frite à la Tyrolienne without a break is a good sign of the genre: these books were written as aides-mémoire for cooks who had served an apprenticeship, not as instruction for beginners, and the printing is dense and unforgiving because the reader was expected to supply the rest.