No. 1133

Carp Stuffed a la Champenoise-Salmon

Carpe Saumonee Farcie a la Champenoise

Scale and clean two carps each of two pounds; prepare a pike quenelle forcemeat (No. 90), adding to it a quarter as much cooked fine herbs (No. 385). Stuff both the fish with this forcemeat and wrap them up separately in slices of fat pork, or in buttered paper, braise them in a mirepoix (No. 419); moisten with white wine and broth, and when the fish is cooked, strain, and skim the fat from the gravy, then reduce it with an equal quantity of espagnole sauce (No. 414). Boil it on one side only, despumating well; add some champagne wine, and reduce once more. Just when ready to serve, dress a garnishing around the fish, composed of mushrooms, quenelles, and small onions; cover over with a part of the sauce, and send the rest to the table in a separate sauce-boat, arranging around the edge of the dish trussed crawfish, and fried carps' milts.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A composed braise from Ranhofer's Epicurean, written for a brigade with stockpots already going. The cross-references are the real work: without a pike forcemeat and an espagnole, there is no dish.

The hinge: boil on one side onlySet the reducing sauce off-center on the burner so it simmers along one edge; the fat and albumin collect on the still side where they can be lifted off. "Despumating" is exactly that skimming, and it is what keeps the finished sauce clear rather than cloudy and greasy.
What a mirepoix means hereIn this book (No. 419) it is not a modern aromatic base but a braising bed of diced carrot, onion, celery and herbs cooked with fat pork or ham. The fish sits on it and is moistened with white wine and broth; the recipe itself does not specify the depth of the liquid or whether the pan is covered.
Espagnole, and a shortcutEspagnole is a brown veal stock thickened with brown roux and long reduced, usually with some tomato — a day's work in itself. A well-reduced brown veal or chicken stock lightly thickened will carry the sauce; a canned demi-glace concentrate will do if you cut the salt elsewhere.
Oven and timingThe book gives no temperature; braising covered in a moderate oven, around 325F, works. Two-pound stuffed carp need roughly 30 to 40 minutes; the forcemeat should read 145 to 150F at the center. Written for a coal range, so check early — carp flesh goes cottony once it passes done.
Fat pork or buttered paperThe wrapping is structural, not decorative: it holds the stuffed cavity shut and keeps the flanks from drying. Thin sheets of fatback or caul fat work; parchment brushed with butter and tied at both ends is the lighter option.
MiltsCarp milt is the soft roe of the male fish, sold as such at some Asian and Eastern European markets. If you cannot get it, omit the garnish rather than substituting hard roe, which fries to a grainy mass.
Crawfish"Trussed" means the tail bent under and pinned with the claws so the cooked crawfish sits upright around the rim. Boiled whole crawfish, cooled, are what is wanted; the garnish is visual and can be skipped.
Cleaning carpScale thoroughly against the grain — carp scales are large and stubborn — and remove the dark lateral strip of flesh under the skin, which carries most of the muddy flavor. Farmed carp is milder than wild.
YieldTwo two-pound fish plus forcemeat, quenelles, mushrooms and onions serve six to eight as a course.

A Little History

Carpe saumonée is generally taken to mean a "salmon-like" carp — a large, well-fed fish said to take on a pinkish cast in the flesh, prized enough in nineteenth-century French kitchens to get its own name on the menu. The Champenoise treatment points to Champagne, where carp from the region's ponds were a Lenten and feast-day staple long before the wine became a luxury export. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working record of that kitchen, and the recipe shows how it operated: every component is a numbered cross-reference to a forcemeat, a mirepoix, an herb preparation, a mother sauce, each already prepared by a different station. Freshwater carp was also abundant and cheap in American markets by then — common carp had been widely stocked in United States waters in the 1870s and 1880s — so a dish like this dressed an inexpensive fish in the full apparatus of haute cuisine.