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Mayonnaise of Perch
Cut off the fillets of three or four medium-sized perch and season them with salt and pepper; butter the bottom of a flat stewpan, put the fillets in, pour a little wine over them and boil, keeping them rather firm. Take them off the fire when done and leave till cold; then divide the fillets in two parts, put them in a deep dish, sprinkle in some salt and pepper and pour some oil and vinegar over them, let them steep for an hour. Arrange the fillets in layers on an aspic border, building them in a domelike shape and masking each layer with mayonnaise sauce. Cover the top with mayonnaise sauce, and serve.
A cold buffet dish from the Waldorf's larder department, built in stages over several hours. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to line a mould with aspic and how to make mayonnaise stiff enough to coat.
- Do not actually boil"Boil, keeping them rather firm" means a bare simmer — the liquid should barely shiver. Perch fillets are thin and are done in three to four minutes; at a rolling boil they shred and the dish cannot be layered.
- How much wineNo quantity is given. A few tablespoons of dry white wine is enough for three or four fish; the fillets steam more than they poach in a buttered flat pan. Add a splash of water if the pan threatens to go dry.
- Perch and substitutesEuropean or yellow perch fillets are small, firm and sweet. Small fillets of walleye, pike-perch, sea bass or snapper behave the same way. Three or four medium perch yield surprisingly little — roughly 12 oz of fillet, enough for four as a first course.
- The hour of steepingThe oil-and-vinegar marinade is a seasoning step, not a garnish. Use about three parts oil to one vinegar, just enough to coat, and drain the fillets well before masking or the mayonnaise will slide off.
- Aspic borderA bordure is a ring of clear fish jelly set in a savarin or ring mould, turned out onto the platter to hold the dome of fish. Make it from strained, clarified fish stock set with gelatine — roughly a tablespoon of powdered gelatine to 2 cups of stock, and more if the border has to stand unmoulded for any length of time.
- Masking mayonnaiseMayonnaise for coating must be stiffer than salad mayonnaise and is often let down with a little melted aspic (a mayonnaise collée), which then sets so the coating holds on the fish rather than weeping. Apply it cold, on cold fish, and chill between layers.
- Raw egg in the sauceThe mayonnaise is uncooked and never heated. Use pasteurised eggs or commercial mayonnaise if serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, and keep the finished dish refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- TimingPoach and cool the fish the day before; marinate, build and coat no more than a couple of hours before serving. An assembled dome held overnight goes weepy where the mayonnaise meets the jelly.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms in the era when a cold buffet was judged on architecture as much as flavour, and this is a straightforward example of the genre: poached fish, marinated, stacked into a dome, sealed under sauce and framed by a ring of glittering aspic. The recipe is printed in English — "aspic border", "masking" — but the underlying technical vocabulary is French, and the form descends from the elaborate cold entrées codified by Carême and simplified by Escoffier's generation for hotel service, where a dish had to be built in the larder in the morning and hold its shape on a sideboard all evening. Perch is the telling choice: a freshwater fish, cheap and abundant in American lakes and rivers in the 1890s, dressed up here in the full ceremonial manner. Much of Oscar's book works that way, taking ordinary domestic ingredients and putting them through hotel technique.