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Salmon Montpelier
Cut about eight pounds from the middle of a large salmon, put it into a braisingpan with a few sliced carrots and onions, one-fourth pound of butter, a bunch of thyme, basil, and half a dozen bay leaves, three quarts of stock, two quarts of water, and one-half bottle of chablis. Place the pan over the fire until the liquor begins to boil, then move it to the side and simmer it gently for an hour. Blanch in equal quantities some chives and parsley, place them in a mortar with one or two boned anchovies, and pound them well together with four ounces of butter and a small quantity of cayenne pepper. When quite smooth place the mixture on a plate, and set it on the ice. When the salmon is cooked, leave it in the liquor until cold, then drain it and spread the above mixture over on both sides. Place it on an oval dish, decorate it with lobster spawn, garnish the dish with truffles, parsley, chopped whites of eggs, and croutons of aspic jelly; fill up the cavity in the body of the salmon with parsley, and serve.
This is a cold buffet centerpiece: a whole center-cut salmon poached in a court bouillon, chilled in its own liquor, then masked in Montpellier butter and dressed for a long table. Almost everything about it is timing and temperature rather than technique.
- The hinge: cool it in the liquorLeaving the fish in its poaching liquid until cold is what keeps it moist and lets it firm up enough to handle and coat. Do not lift it out hot. For food safety, get the pan into an ice bath or the refrigerator rather than letting eight pounds of fish sit at room temperature for hours.
- Poaching heat"Move it to the side and simmer gently" means water barely trembling rather than bubbling; the recipe gives no temperature, but something in the region of 160-170F suits. The hour is the recipe's own figure for an eight-pound center cut; a hard simmer will shred the flakes and cloud the liquor.
- Braising pan and liquidThree quarts stock, two quarts water and a half bottle of Chablis comes to about five and a half quarts, enough to submerge the fish in a fish kettle or a deep roasting pan. If you have less capacity, reduce the liquid proportionally rather than half-covering the salmon.
- Six bay leavesSix is a great deal for this quantity of liquid; two or three is plenty in five and a half quarts.
- Montpellier butterThe green mixture is a classic beurre de Montpellier. Blanching the chives and parsley sets the color; shock them in ice water and squeeze them very dry or the butter will separate. A food processor replaces the mortar, but keep the butter cold and pulse rather than run it.
- Lobster spawnThis is lobster coral, the dark roe from a hen lobster, which turns coral-red when cooked and was used as a garnish and coloring. It is rarely sold separately now; cooked shell-on lobster or a little sieved cooked coral from a whole hen lobster is the only realistic source.
- Aspic croutonsFirm aspic cut into triangles or diamonds. Made with sheet or powdered gelatin, use enough for a slice-able set (roughly double a dessert jelly) so the shapes hold on the platter at room temperature.
- YieldEight pounds of salmon serves twenty to twenty-five as part of a cold buffet. Scale to a two- or three-pound center cut for a domestic table, cutting the poaching time to about 20-25 minutes and the butter by two-thirds.
Montpellier butter is a nineteenth-century French garde-manger preparation; the name points to the city in Languedoc, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, was recording the food of a hotel that fed New York society at banquets where the cold buffet did much of the work: a masked salmon, decorated with truffle, chopped egg white and cut aspic, could be built the day before and stand handsomely for hours. The elaborate decoration is not vanity but function, since a whole poached fish left plain looks grey. Chablis appears in the court bouillon and anchovy in the butter, drawing on a kitchen that kept wine and salt fish always at hand.