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Halibut Marguerites
Line a buttered tablespoon with Fish Force-meat II. Fill with Creamed Lobster, cover with force-meat, and garnish with force-meat, forced through a pastry bag and tube, in the form of a marguerite, having the centre colored yellow. Slip from spoon into boiling water, and cook eight minutes. Serve with Béchamel or Lobster Sauce.
This is a quenelle dressed up as a flower, and the whole thing hinges on the poaching water rather than the piping. Fannie Farmer assumes you have her Fish Force-meat II and Creamed Lobster already made, so the page reads as a shorthand.
- The water must not boilDespite the wording, a hard rolling boil is likely to tear quenelles apart and coarsen them; better to hold it just below a simmer, at a bare shiver. Eight minutes should suit a tablespoon-sized portion.
- What the force-meat isFish Force-meat II is a separate recipe in the book, a pounded raw white-fish force-meat bound with egg and enriched with cream; look it up before starting, as the proportions matter. A food processor does the pounding in a minute; keep the fish, bowl and cream cold or the mixture will break when it hits the water.
- "A buttered tablespoon"Most likely a table (serving) spoon pressed into service as a mould rather than a measuring spoon, though the book does not say which. Butter it well and chill it; the lining wants to be thin but thick enough that the lobster stays enclosed.
- Creamed LobsterCooked lobster meat bound in a thick white sauce. It must be cold and stiff before it goes in, or it will leak through the seam. A tablespoon-sized case takes only a teaspoon of filling.
- The yellow centreThe recipe does not say what to colour it with. Sieved hard-boiled egg yolk worked into a little of the force-meat is one plausible route, and it stiffens the mixture enough to pipe; saffron or a yolk-based colouring would also serve.
- Piping before poachingThe daisy petals are piped on while raw and set as the quenelle cooks. Chill the assembled shapes on a buttered plate for fifteen minutes first so the relief survives the water.
- Yield and servingExpect eight to ten pieces from a cup of force-meat; two per person as a light entrée. Lift them out with a slotted spoon, drain on a cloth, and nap with Béchamel or Lobster Sauce so the piped surface still shows.
Quenelles — forcemeat poached in a spoon-shaped mold — came into American cooking straight from French professional practice. The name here refers to the garnish: marguerite is French for daisy, and the piped flower with a yellow eye was a stock decorative motif of the era, applied to everything from consommé to cake icing. In the long formal dinner of the period the entrée was a small made dish served between the fish and the roast, judged largely on its appearance, which is why a recipe this short devotes most of its words to shaping and none to seasoning. Farmer's habit of cross-referencing — Fish Force-meat II, Creamed Lobster, Béchamel — also shows how her book was meant to be used: as a system of components rather than a set of standalone dishes.