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Fish or Poissons: Served
Filets de cabillaud à l'Aurore are little slices broiled and served with egg sauce. Served in a cheese sauce, they are à la Morny.
Morue au beurre noir. Salt cod, boiled, and served with black-butter sauce. Served with egg sauce, it is called à la Capucine. au gratin. Pieces of salt cod, with a sauce of butter, flour and cream; sprinkled with breadcrumbs, grated cheese and melted butter, and browned.
Brandade de Morue. Salt cod, in small pieces, with oil, melted butter, parsley and garlic; stirred to a cream.
DABS.
Served as Limandes frites they are fried.
EELS.
Anguilles au soleil are cut up, stewed in wine and water with vegetables, etc.; the pieces rolled in the sauce, breadcrumbed and fried. en ragoût are stewed in the same way, and served in the sauce with the addition of wine. Served in oyster sauce, they are à la Parisienne. à la broche are larded and roasted. à la minute-boiled, and served with maître d'hôtel sauce and potatoes. à la Poulette-stewed with broth, wine, butter, onions, mushrooms, etc. Served with yolks of eggs and lemon juice added to the sauce.
Anguilles à l'Anglaise are small slices wrapped in paste, or dipped in batter, and fried. Served with anchovy sauce. à la Tartare-small pieces, breadcrumbed and fried; served in Tartare sauce. à la Suffren-larded with strips of gherkins and anchovies, braised with vinegar and herbs, and served in tomato sauce. en mayonnaise à la Dieppe are pieces stuffed with forcemeat, rolled, covered with Mayonnaise sauce, and served on a border of green aspic with salad in the centre. en matelote-stewed, and served in Matelote sauce.
Filets d'anguilles en paupiettes are pieces stuffed, rolled, breadcrumbed and fried. à l'aspic are pieces of stewed eels set in a mould of aspic.
EEL-POUT.
Lottes en matelote are stewed in wine with mushrooms and herbs, and served in the sauce. à la Parisienne-stewed, and served in white sauce with oysters. à l'Italienne-fried, and served with Italian sauce. à la Prussienne-boiled in a sauce of stock, oil, champagne, etc.
FLOUNDERS.
Carrelets frits are fried. Served with tomato sauce, they are called à la Orly. grillés-broiled.
Souché de carrelets. A water souché of flounders boiled with strips of carrot and turnip, sprigs of parsley, etc. Tench, perch, eels, and many other fish are dressed in this way.
GUDGEON, Goujons frits are fried.
GURNARD.
Grondin farci au four is stuffed and baked.
Filets de grondins en matelote. Fillets cut in halves, breadcrumbed and fried; served on a border, with Matelote sauce. à la St. Malo are sauté, and served with shrimp sauce; à l'Italienne, with Italian sauce; à la Maître d'hôtel, with maître d'hôtel sauce. à la Vénitienne are served in a white sharp sauce with chopped tarragon.
HADDOCK.
Merluche grillée is broiled. Served with tarragon butter, it is à l'estragon. à la Hollandaise-served with Hollandaise sauce; à la maître d'hôtel-with maître d'hôtel sauce. sauce aux œufs-boiled and served with egg sauce. farcie-stuffed, baked, and served with brown gravy. à la Syrienne-served in a brown sharp sauce with chopped gherkins. à la Viennoise-served in a white sauce with chopped ham and tarragon.
Cod, salt cod, dabs, eels, eel-pout, flounders, gudgeon, gurnard, haddock. The page is a sketch of a fish market, and about half of it is no longer reachable.
- Salt cod needs the day beforeMorue au beurre noir, morue au gratin and brandade all begin, on this page, with the cod already soft. It is not. Salt cod must be soaked for a day or more with the water changed several times, and the dish is decided by how well that was done. The book does not mention it because no cook needed telling.
- Twelve eel dishesThis is the clearest single measure of what has changed. The European eel is now critically endangered and its trade is restricted; a page that treats eel as the most versatile fish on the slab was written when it was also one of the most ordinary. Read these entries, and cook them with something else.
- Eel-pout is not monkfishThe lottes here are the freshwater burbot. On a French menu today lotte means monkfish, a sea fish with nothing in common with it. Anyone translating this page by dictionary will land on the wrong animal and wonder why the recipe makes no sense.
- Beurre noir goes further than you thinkBlack butter is butter cooked past brown until the solids are genuinely dark, then sharpened with vinegar. Modern advice usually stops at beurre noisette. The older sauce is more bitter and more assertive, and it is the point of the dish rather than an accident of overcooking — though the margin between the two is about twenty seconds.
- SouchéSouché de carrelets is fish poached in a light broth with strips of carrot and turnip and sprigs of parsley, served in the liquor. Because the broth comes to the table, the knife work on the vegetables is part of the dish and not preparation for it.
- Small fish, wholeGudgeon fried, dabs fried, the lot of them cooked whole and eaten off the bone. A modern fishmonger carries six or eight species; this page assumes twenty, including several too small to fillet and sold by the plateful.
A list this long, in a household kitchen inland, is a fact about rail and ice rather than about cookery. Sea fish could reach a town’s market fresh enough to be served plainly, and the market still found it worth selling the small and the cheap — gudgeon, dabs, flounders — alongside the haddock and the cod. The salt cod entries point back to an older arrangement again, to a preserved fish that travelled any distance and kept any length of time, and that a cook was expected to be able to bring back to life.