No. 1175

Herrings, Fresh, Mustard or Thickened Maitre d'Hotel Sauce

Harengs Frais, Sauce Moutarde ou Maitre d'Hôtel Liee

Choose very full herrings, clip off the fins, cut incisions on the backs, and lay the fish on a dish; season, sprinkle with oil, then range them on a hot broiler, and broil them over a good fire, turning them round; eight or ten minutes suffices to cook them. Dress them on a dish, and serve a mustard sauce separately, prepared as follows: Put some lean veloute (No. 416) into a saucepan, season well, and butter profusely; into this mix a quarter as much common mustard. Pour the sauce into a sauce-boat and serve with the herrings, or else serve a thickened maitre d'hotel sauce (No. 493).

← No. 1174 Herrings, Fresh, a la Calaisienne Shad, Herring & Mackerel No. 1176 Herrings, Fresh, Paupiettes with Milts →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a coal-fired gridiron and a kitchen with a stockpot of velouté already going. Both are easy to work around; the sauce is where the attention belongs.

Do not boil the mustardOnce the mustard goes into the velouté, keep the pan below a simmer and serve promptly. Boiling drives off the volatile compounds that give mustard its bite and leaves a flat, faintly bitter sauce.
"Very full" herringsHe means plump fish heavy with roe or milt, not merely large ones. Look for 8-10 oz whole herrings with bright eyes and firm flesh; herring is oily and turns rancid faster than white fish, so buy the day you cook.
Lean veloutéNo. 416 is presumably a lean (maigre) velouté, made on fish or other lean stock rather than veal, thickened with a white roux. A well-reduced fish velouté, or a light fish fumet thickened with roux, is the equivalent; Ranhofer gives no quantity.
"Common mustard"Prepared wet mustard, not dry powder. A quarter as much means roughly 1 part mustard to 4 parts sauce by volume, which is assertive: start with half that and taste. The mild yellow mustard familiar today was not yet the default, and "common mustard" of this period was likely sharper.
Buttered profusely"Butter profusely" means enriching the sauce generously; the usual handling is to whisk the butter in off the heat, several tablespoons to a cup of velouté. This is what carries the mustard; skimp on it and the sauce tastes raw.
The broilerA hot broiler here is a gridiron over live fire. A charcoal grill or a preheated ridged pan works; an oven broiler set high and the fish 3-4 inches from the element also does the job. Oil the fish, not the grate, and turn them as they cook.
TimingEight to ten minutes total for whole herrings of this size is right, and the scored backs help the heat reach the thickest part. The fish is done when the flesh at the spine has lost its translucency.
Maître d'hôtel liéeNo. 493 is the thickened version: on the classical pattern, the usual lemon, parsley and butter bound with a little velouté or reduction so it holds together as a sauce rather than melting into oil on the plate.
YieldOne large or two small herrings per person, with about a cup of finished sauce serving four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and the herring entries sit slightly awkwardly in a book of terrapin and truffled capon: herring was cheap, abundant and strongly associated with fast days and with immigrant and northern European tables rather than with luxury dining. What makes it restaurant food here is the sauce. Mustard with oily fish is a long-standing pairing in French and Northern cooking — the sharpness cuts the fat, and the same logic gives us mackerel with gooseberry or with mustard butter — but Ranhofer routes it through the classical system, building on a lean velouté rather than simply stirring mustard into butter. The alternative he offers, maître d'hôtel liée, is the familiar parsley-and-lemon butter given body with a bound sauce so that it behaves properly under a waiter's spoon, a small but telling sign of how much of this book was written for service at table rather than for a home cook at the stove.