No. 1201

Matelote a la Mariniere, St. Mande

Matelote a la Mariniere St. Mande

Cut into four ounce slices, one pound of eels and one pound of carp, salt and marinate for two hours, then wash and drain. Put one quart of red wine into a saucepan sufficiently large to contain three quarts; add a large bunch of parsley garnished with one bay leaf, as much thyme and one clove of garlic, one coffeespoonful of whole allspice, pepper and the necessary salt, one ounce of butter and half a pound of mushrooms; let all cook for fifteen minutes, then put in the eels, cook for ten minutes longer before adding the carp and a pint of small white onions blanched for about ten minutes, drained, then fried in butter to a good golden color with a little sugar; thicken the whole with kneaded butter (No. 579) and strain through a sieve. Dress the fish, cover it with the sauce and garnish around with fried croutons of bread, some trussed crawfish and fried egg-yolks and milts.

← No. 1200 Spanish Mackerel with Green Peas Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1202 Matelote a la Talabasse →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's matelote is a red-wine fish stew built like a coq au vin: the wine is infused first, the fish poached in it, the liquid thickened and strained back over. A few of his terms and proportions need translating.

The hinge: infuse first, poach lastThe quart of wine simmers fifteen minutes with the aromatics before any fish goes in, so the harshness cooks off and the herbs give up their flavour. Fish added at the start would be shredded by the time the wine tasted right.
Kneaded butter (No. 579)Beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a smooth paste, whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. About 1 oz butter to 1 oz flour will lightly bind a quart; add it in stages and let it boil a minute to lose the raw flour taste.
CoffeespoonfulA coffeespoon in this period is roughly a half-teaspoon, not the modern teaspoon. Whole allspice at that quantity is assertive; the sieve at the end catches the berries.
"Salt and marinate for two hours"Ranhofer doesn't say what the marinade consists of, only that the fish is salted, marinated, then washed and drained; the salt firms eel and carp flesh and draws out some of the muddiness carp is prone to. Rinse thoroughly and pat dry, and hold back on salting the wine until you taste at the end.
Timings for the two fishEel is dense and takes the full ten minutes; four-ounce slices of carp are done in six to eight, so watch rather than clock them. Both should just flake — carp held too long in the wine turns cottony.
Sourcing eel and carpEuropean eel is now severely restricted and expensive; American eel is still sold, usually live or freshly killed at Asian and Italian fishmongers, and should be skinned. Farmed carp is the practical option.
Milts and fried egg-yolksMilt is soft roe, the male fish's sperm sac, floured and fried; ask a fishmonger to save some, or leave it out. Ranhofer doesn't say how the yolks are handled; hard-boiled yolks browned in butter is the usual reading. Fried egg-yolks turn up as a garnish in matelotes of this period.
Crawfish"Trussed" means the tail bent back and the claws hooked over it so they hold a curled shape while boiling. Cook them separately in salted water; a half-dozen whole ones around the platter is plenty.
StrainingLift the fish out with a skimmer onto the serving dish and keep it warm, then strain the sauce over it. The herbs and whole spice go; you may want to keep the mushrooms and glazed onions back to return to the platter rather than lose them in the sieve.
YieldTwo pounds of fish plus garnish serves four generously as a main course, six as a middle course in the older service.

A Little History

Matelote comes from matelot, sailor, and the name attaches to the freshwater fish stews of the Loire, the Seine and the Rhone rather than to anything from the sea — eel and carp in red wine, thickened and finished with the standard trinity of glazed onions, mushrooms and fried croutons. Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for over thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, catalogues several versions; a la mariniere generally signals the plainer wine-and-onion treatment, while the St. Mande tag points to the town just east of Paris, a common way of pinning a name to a variant without claiming any real origin for it. That a New York restaurant kitchen worked with eel and carp at all says something about the period: freshwater fish was ordinary market goods in nineteenth-century America, and the dish arrives with an elaborate garnish of crawfish, soft roe and fried yolks.