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Mayonnaise of Turbot
Remove the skin and bones from two or three pounds of cold boiled turbot; cut up the meat into shapes such as hearts or rounds, place them in a basin with sufficient oil and vinegar to moisten, sprinkle over pepper and salt, and add a flavoring of chopped shallots and tarragon leaves. Allow the pieces of fish to soak in this for an hour or so, then remove them, arrange them in a circle on a dish, garnish with small fillets of anchovies and gherkins, hard-boiled eggs, beet-root in slices, capers, tarragon leaves and pieces of chopped meat jelly. Pour some mayonnaise sauce in the center of the dish, and serve.
A cold buffet dish built on leftover boiled fish, in the French service style Oscar kept at the Waldorf. Almost all the work is in the marinating and the arrangement.
- Turbot, and what to use insteadTrue turbot is a European flatfish of the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean, expensive and not commonly stocked in American markets. Halibut, brill, or another firm white flatfish, poached and cooled, behaves much the same way; whatever you use, the flesh needs to be firm enough to hold a cut shape.
- Start from properly cooked fishThe recipe assumes cold boiled turbot left from a previous meal. Poach the fish just to opaque and let it cool completely in or out of the liquid before cutting -- warm fish will crumble as you shape it.
- Oil and vinegar to moistenNo quantities are given. Treat it as a light marinade rather than a dressing: a few tablespoons of oil to one of vinegar will coat two to three pounds of fish, and too much acid over the hour will make the flesh chalky and start to break it down.
- An hour or so is the limitAn hour or so -- The recipe says "an hour or so," and vinegar continues to firm and whiten the fish, so there is little to gain by going much longer; left overnight it moves toward a ceviche texture, which is not what the arrangement wants. Keep it cold while it soaks.
- Chopped meat jellyThis is aspic -- a clarified, set meat stock, chopped rough with a knife so it glitters on the plate. A firm consommé set with gelatine does the job. It is decorative rather than structural and can be left out.
- Mayonnaise sauceIn 1896 that means mayonnaise made to order with raw yolks. Since the sauce is never cooked, use pasteurized eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise thinned slightly with lemon juice, particularly if serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Assemble cold and lateEverything -- fish, garnishes, dish -- should be cold, and the mayonnaise should go into the center of the ring only just before it goes to the table, or it slackens and runs into the fish.
- YieldTwo to three pounds of picked fish, with the garnishes, serves six to eight as a first course or four to five as a summer lunch.
Cold "mayonnaise of" dishes -- of salmon, of lobster, of chicken, of turbot -- were a fixture of the late nineteenth-century buffet, and this one is straight out of the French repertoire associated with Oscar Tschirky, who served as maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf. Turbot carried real prestige in that kitchen: it was a European fish, generally imported or served at hotels grand enough to get it, and boiling a whole one for a formal dinner left cooked flesh that could be put to further use. The construction here is characteristic of the period's cold table, where the arranged garnish -- anchovy, gherkin, beet, caper, egg, chopped aspic laid out in deliberate contrast of color -- did as much work as the seasoning, and the sauce was poured in the center. The book itself appeared in 1896, when the Waldorf was new and Oscar's name was becoming shorthand for New York dining at its most formal.