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Croquettes of Trout
Cut off the fillets from two cold boiled trout, divide them into squares, cover them over with chopped onions and chervil, squeeze over a small quantity of lemon juice and roll them up into croquettes, dip them into villeroi sauce, then into egg and breadcrumbs twice so as to have them well covered, plunge them into a fryingpan of boiling fat and fry them to a good brown color. When done take them out, drain, and place them on a napkin spread on a dish and serve with parsley for garnish.
Fillets of Trout, Aurora Cut the fillets from three trout, from them into any desired shape, place them in a sautepan with a little warmed butter, sprinkle over with salt and pepper, and cook them quickly over the fire until they are done, turning them often so as to have them well done on both sides. Place them on a dish, pour over a quantity of aurora sauce, or sauce made red with lobster spawn, and serve without delay.
Fillets of Trout, Sauted Separate the bones from the fillets, cut each fillet into halves, put them in a buttered sautepan, season with salt and pepper and fry them over a brisk fire. Put one-half pound of lobster butter into a saucepan, with the yolks of four or five eggs, the juice of a lemon, and a little salt and pepper, and stir all together over a clear fire till well mixed; then pour in one half-pint of melted butter and two teaspoonfuls of essence of anchovy. Stir the sauce till thick and on the point of boiling, then move it off the fire. When cooked place the fillets on a hot dish, strain the sauce through a fine sieve over them and serve.
Three trout preparations run together in one paragraph, all assuming a professional kitchen with a stocked sauce station. The croquettes are the fussiest; the sautéed fillets with lobster-butter sauce is the one most likely to break.
- The hinge: chill before breadingVilleroi is a thick velouté or allemande enriched with egg yolk, used as an edible glue. The coated pieces must be spread on a tray and refrigerated until the sauce is firm to the touch, at least an hour, before the egg-and-crumb coating goes on. Warm villeroi will slide off in the fat and the croquettes will burst.
- Villeroi sauceIf you have no sauce station, make a small quantity: 2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp flour cooked to a blond roux, 1 cup fish or chicken stock, simmered until very thick, then finished off the heat with an egg yolk and a little cream. It should coat a spoon heavily and set solid when cold.
- Frying fat"Boiling fat" is usually taken to mean somewhere around 350-375F. Below that the double crumb coating soaks; above it the crumbs colour before the cold interior warms through. Two to three minutes should give the "good brown color."
- Aurora sauceIn this period aurora is a velouté or béchamel tinted and flavoured with tomato, sometimes reinforced with lobster coral. The alternative Oscar offers, "sauce made red with lobster spawn," means the raw coral of a hen lobster pounded into butter; tomato paste is the practical substitute for colour and a little acidity.
- Lobster butterHalf a pound is made by pounding lobster shells and coral with an equal weight of soft butter, melting gently, and straining through muslin into iced water so the flavoured butter sets on top. Bought lobster or crayfish butter works; plain butter with a spoonful of tomato paste is the fallback.
- The egg-yolk sauce will curdle if pushedHalf a pound of lobster butter, four or five yolks, lemon juice and then a half-pint of melted butter is a hollandaise in all but name, and "on the point of boiling" is optimistic advice. Work over barely simmering water and keep the sauce below about 180F; take it off while it is still glossy.
- Essence of anchovyA Victorian bottled seasoning of anchovy, vinegar and spice. Two teaspoons of it are roughly matched by one teaspoon of anchovy paste or three mashed fillets plus a few drops of vinegar.
- ChervilSold fresh only in spring and early summer in most places. Flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon comes close; dried chervil has almost no flavour.
- YieldTwo trout should give roughly eight small croquettes, perhaps two servings as a first course. The aurora preparation, the only one that names a quantity, uses three trout and will serve about three.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf dining rooms at a moment when American hotel cooking was frankly an imitation of Escoffier-era French practice, and these three trout entries show the system rather than any single dish: a cold cooked fish is not leftovers but raw material, to be bound in villeroi and fried, or dressed in a sauce named for a colour. Sauce Villeroi is generally traced to the eighteenth-century French court and the Villeroy family, and by 1900 it was one of the coatings used for things to be crumbed and deep fried; sauce aurore takes its name from the dawn, for the pink the tomato or lobster coral gives it. The casual call for half a pound of lobster butter, as though it were simply on hand, tells you what kind of kitchen this is — one with a brigade, a fish cook, and shells left over from the à la carte lobster orders.