“And now, leaving the fish, we come to the _pièce de resistance_ of the dinner, called the _relévé_. No Frenchman will ever willingly cook a ladies’ dinner and give anything coarser or heavier than a _filet de bœuf_. He will do it, if he has to, of course, but he will think you a barbarian if you order him to do it. I eschew the mushroom and confine myself to the truffle in the treatment of the _filet_. I oftentimes have a _filet à la mœlle de bœuf_, or _à la jardinière_. In the fall of the year, turkey _poults à la Bordelaise_, or _à la Toulouse_, or a saddle of Southdown mutton or lamb, are a good substitute. Let me here say that the American turkey, as found on Newport Island, all its feathers being jet black and its diet grasshoppers, is exceptionally fine.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Cut two slices chicken halibut in fillets, sprinkle fillets with salt and pepper, pour over one-third cup white wine, cover, and let stand thirty minutes. Drain, dip each piece separately in heavy cream, then in flour, and fry in deep fat. Cook skin and bones removed from fish with five slices carrot, two slices onion, sprig parsley, bit of bay leaf, one-fourth teaspoon peppercorns, and two cups cold water until reduced to one cup liquid. Make sauce of two tablespoons butter, three tablespoons flour, the fish stock, and one-third cup heavy cream. Add yolks two eggs, salt, pepper, cayenne, and white wine to taste. Arrange fish on serving dish, cover with one-half pound mushroom caps cleaned, then sautéd in butter, and pour over sauce.
Sources: The passage is from Ward McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, amphora stamp.