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Two Yolks of Eggs (One ounce of Flour)
One ounce of Flour.
One tablespoonful of Cream.
Six fried Bread Croûtons. 1 Larding Bacon or Gherkins.
Salt, Pepper, and grated Nutmeg.
Eight stuffed new Potatoes.
Split the piece of salmon down the centre, remove the skin and bone, and cut about eight nice slices lengthways; pare and flatten them a little, lard one side of each with strips of gherkin or fat bacon, and place in a buttered sauté-pan, season with salt and pepper, add the white wine and a little mussel liquor, cover with a buttered paper, and cook in the oven until done.
In the meantime, put the fish-bone, skin and parings into a stewpan with a little salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, half a sliced onion, parsley, bayleaf, thyme, the red wine and half a pint of water. Cover and let simmer for half an hour.
Cook an ounce of flour in a stewpan with an ounce of butter, stir in the above prepared strained fish fond; let it boil for a few minutes, long enough to cook the flour thoroughly. Add two yolks of eggs and the lemon juice, stir over the fire to bind the eggs, and pass through a tammy.
Finish with a tablespoonful of cream.
Place the mussels, when cleaned, into a stewpan with half an ounce of butter, a sprig of parsley, half a sliced onion, and a gill of water. Boil until they open. Strain the liquor, pick the mussels and place them in the liquor, together with the fish quenelles (previously prepared), and the tails of six crayfish, to keep warm.
Dish up the grenadins in a row alternately with the bread croutons of the same shape, garnish round with stuffed new potatoes, the mussels, quenelles and crayfish.
Reduce the juice in the sauté-pan with its fond, add one ounce of butter, and strain into the sauce, pour a little sauce over the fish, and serve the rest separately.
This is a page from a professional kitchen's repertoire — salmon grenadins with a red-wine-and-mussel fish velouté, finished with egg yolks. The ingredient list as printed has clearly lost its head: the salmon, the white and red wine, the mussels, crayfish, quenelles and butter all appear in the method but never in the list, so read the method first and shop from it.
- The hinge: the yolk liaisonOnce the two yolks go in, the sauce must be held below a simmer — around 160-175F. Boiling it will scramble the yolks and no amount of passing through a cloth will bring it back. Temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce first, then return them off the direct heat.
- GrenadinsThe word normally means small larded fillets, usually of veal; here it is borrowed for lengthways slices of salmon, pared flat and larded on one side with strips of gherkin or fat bacon. A larding needle makes this manageable; without one, cut shallow slits with a paring knife and press the strips in.
- Oven and cooking timeThe instruction is simply "cook in the oven until done"; no temperature or time is given. A moderate oven — very roughly 325-350F — for something like 10-12 minutes would suit slices under an inch thick. Modern practice pulls salmon at 125-130F in the centre; cooking of this period was probably taken further.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche — a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered side down on the fish. It keeps the surface moist and stops the flesh drying while the wine reduces beneath. Parchment is a direct substitute for the original kitchen paper.
- A gillA quarter of a pint, five imperial fluid ounces, about 150 ml. It appears here as the water for opening the mussels.
- TammyA tammy cloth was a fine worsted strainer through which sauce was wrung by two people twisting the ends. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a conical strainer lined with muslin, does the same work.
- MusselsScrub and debeard, discard any that stay open when tapped raw, and discard any that stay shut after boiling. The strained liquor is worth decanting off the last spoonful, which will carry grit.
- Fish fondHalf an hour of simmering on skin, bone and trimmings is about right; fish bones are generally reckoned to give up what they have quickly and to turn bitter if pushed much further. Strain rather than press, or the sauce will cloud.
- Quenelles and crayfishThe fish quenelles are assumed to be made in advance from another page of the book: a pounded fish forcemeat bound with egg and cream, poached in small spoon-shaped dumplings. Crayfish tails can be replaced with cooked langoustine or large prawn tails without disturbing the balance of the dish.
- YieldEight slices of salmon, eight stuffed potatoes and six croûtons point to four generous portions as a main course, or eight as a fish course in a longer menu.
"High class" cookery books of this kind were written for cooks in large private houses working to the French professional system, and this dish is that system in miniature: nothing is wasted and nothing is quick. The bone, skin and parings become the fond; the fond becomes the velouté and returned to the sauce; the garnish is a separate small production of mussels, quenelles, crayfish tails, croûtons cut to match the fish, and stuffed potatoes. The pairing of salmon with red wine, which reads as modern, was standard in this repertoire — a red-wine fish sauce of this kind is generally traced to the matelote and génevoise family of freshwater-fish preparations. Terms borrowed from butchery, grenadin and larding among them, appear throughout.