Brandade
The first receipt for a brandade which appeared in print was written by Grimod de la Reynière, and is as follows:-"Among the provincial ragouts in most distinguished favour in Paris are the brandades of salt fish. A restaurateur of the Palais Royal is well known to have made his fortune by his method of preparing them. We give the receipt as it was communicated to us in a village of Languedoc which enjoys a reputation for this very article at once brilliant and merited. The singular name of brandade, though not found in any dictionary, is derived doubtless from the old French verb brandir, which means to shake ; and this action, almost continual, is in fact indispensable to render the ragout what it ought to be. Soak for twenty-four hours a fine piece of salt fish. Put it on the fire in sufficient water, carefully taking it off when it begins to boil. Put butter, oil, parsley and garlic into a stewpan upon a gentle fire. In the meantime skin the fish and divide it into small bits. Put the pieces into the stewpan, and add from time to time more oil, butter or milk, as the whole is perceived to thicken. Shake the stewpan for a long time over the fire, so as to reduce the salt fish to a kind of cream. The receipt is very simple, but we do not cease to repeat that the success of the brandade depends on shaking the stewpan for a very long time. This alone can effect the extreme division or disunion of all the parts of the naturally tough fish and metamorphose it into a sort of cream." It may be a dreadful heresy, but it is difficult not to add Braze that there is an effective instrument called a spoon which is not once mentioned in the foregoing sentences, and which if properly stirred would save a good deal of shaking. Let it be furthermore added, that though Grimod dwells in his usual emphatic way on the creamy nature of a brandade, it is by no means to be classed with spoon meat-it is a very thick cream to be heaped on the dish with fried crusts round it.