Relish
It has already been explained that this is what the French mean by a ragout. Strictly speaking, a relish and a garnish ought to be convertible terms: they are both accompaniments. In practice the name of Garnish is given to any one thing-generally to a vegetable, more or less plain, which is served with meat; and the name of Relish to a combination-as onions, mushrooms, truffles, cockscombs, quenelles, crayfish, oysters, and soft roes, which are worked into the attendant sauce. 1. Financial Relish. - Foremost among them stands the Relish of the Financiers, who have an article to themselves further back. Cockscombs and kernels, collops of sweetbread, quenelles, button mushrooms, and sliced truffles, separately prepared, and then boiled together for a moment in the Sauce of the Financiers. 2. Toulouse Relish. - The same as the foregoing, only tossed for a minute or two in Allemande sauce. It is white, whereas No. 1 is brown. 3. Turtle Relish. - Take sweetbreads in little collops, a few cockscombs, crayfish, hard-boiled yolks of eggs, discs of tongue or of ham, olives, green gherkins, truffles, with a large supply of mushrooms, and set them on the fire for a minute in a sauce made (equal parts) of Spanish and Tomato sauces.
Remoulade 4. Chipolata Relish a great favourite for poultry.
Chipolatas are small sausages, about two inches long, made of pork and bacon. Use instead of them either Frankfort sausages by themselves, or if ordinary pork sausages, add to them an equal number of little slices of bacon made into rolls. Cook these apart, and add to them equal quantities of carrots, turnips, mushrooms, and chestnuts nicely turned, and also cooked apart. Set them on the fire for a minute in Spanish sauce. 5. Poulette Relish used with chicken, from which it takes its name, but more frequently with calves' feet, sheep's trotters, and some kinds of fish notably eels. It consists of shalots and mushrooms passed in butter, and served with chopped parsley in a Poulette sauce. 6. Matelote Relish. - Small onions and mushrooms in a red-wine sauce, described under the name of Matelote. Crayfish and fried crusts of bread are prepared apart and added to the garnish in serving. 7. Relish of the Normandy Matelote. -A quantity of oysters; mussels and mushrooms, prepared in a whitewine sauce, to which the liquor of the mussels contributes. For more detail consult the article on Sole à la Normande. 8. Relish of Soft Roes. - Parboil in some boiling water mixed with salt and two tablespoonfuls of white-wine vinegar, the soft roes of mackerel, carp or herring; drain them on a napkin, and then toss them in some white sauce -Allemande or Suprême, to which may be added chopped parsley, nutmeg and lemon-juice.
This is a dictionary entry that doubles as a set of working formulas: eight classical garnishes, each assuming you already have the named mother sauce to hand. The governing rule is stated almost in passing — every component is cooked separately, then united in the sauce for a minute only.
- Cook apart, combine at the lastThe hinge of all eight. Mushrooms, chestnuts, sausage, sweetbread and turned root vegetables each need different times and are finished individually; the sauce is only a binder and a warming medium. Left to simmer together, the mushrooms weep grey liquid and the quenelles disintegrate.
- Relish means ragoûtNot a pickle or condiment in the modern sense. Kettner is translating the French ragoût in its old technical meaning: a compound garnish bound in sauce and spooned around or over a joint, bird or fish.
- The named saucesSpanish sauce is espagnole, the brown veal-based sauce. Allemande is velouté finished with egg yolk and cream. Suprême is chicken velouté with cream. Sauce financière is espagnole with Madeira and truffle. None is a supermarket item; each has to be made, and the garnish is only as good as it.
- Cockscombs and kernelsCockscombs (the fleshy crest, blanched and peeled) and "kernels" (rognons de coq, usually understood as the cock's kidneys or stones) are not obtainable outside specialist butchery. Extra button mushrooms, sweetbread collops or quenelles carry the dish perfectly well without them.
- Collops, discs and "nicely turned"A collop is a small thin slice. Discs of tongue or ham are coins cut with a cutter. "Turned" carrots and turnips are pared into small barrel or olive shapes so that unequal vegetables cook evenly and look deliberate — the work that makes chipolata garnish look like chipolata garnish.
- ChipolataThe 2-inch pork-and-bacon sausage Kettner describes is close to what Britain now calls a chipolata, a small thin sausage. His own substitution advice still holds: Frankfort sausages on their own, or small pork sausages with an equal number of bacon rolls, cooked separately before they meet the sauce.
- Soft roesSoft roe is milt, the male fish's sperm sac, sold occasionally as herring roe. It is fragile; the acidulated water should be barely trembling and two to three minutes is enough to set it. At a rolling boil it breaks up into curds.
- Turtle RelishDespite the name, no turtle is involved: this is the garnish for dishes dressed in the turtle style, above all calf's head en tortue and mock turtle. Made with sweetbread, tongue, olives and mushrooms it stands on its own.
- Quantities and yieldThe entry gives none, being a reference article rather than a receipt. As a garnish, reckon roughly a generous tablespoon or two of solids per person and enough sauce to coat, not to swim.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877, generally attributed to E. S. Dallas rather than to the restaurateur Auguste Kettner himself) was written to explain the French professional kitchen to English readers who met its vocabulary on restaurant menus and had no idea what it meant. This entry is that project in miniature: it takes the term ragoût, which in English had drifted to mean any stew, and restores its narrow trade sense of a compound garnish. The list is the familiar nineteenth-century repertoire — financière, toulousaine, chipolata, poulette, matelote — of the kind codified by Carême and Gouffé, garnishes a saucier might be expected to produce on demand and identify by name alone on a bill of fare. The cockscombs and kernels that head the first two are the clearest marker of the period; they were commonplace then and laborious to prepare, and their disappearance probably owes as much to the labour they demanded as to any change in taste.