No. 1204

Matelote of Carp, Miroir

Matelote de Carpe, Miroir

Scale, the carp, draw it by the stomach, tie down the head and place it in a narrow low-bordered baking tin, lined with fat pork, minced roots and onions, mushroom peelings and a bunch of parsley; salt the fish, moisten it to half its height with white wine and fish broth, let it come quickly to a boil, and ten minutes after cover the fish over with a strong buttered paper, set it in a moderate oven, to finish cooking slowly without turning it over, but basting frequently. When done remove the fish from the pan with a large perforated skimmer, and dress it on a dish, surround it with a garnishing of very white peeled mushrooms and keep it warm. Strain the liquid into a sautoir, remove the fat and pour in a glassful of red wine; reduce it over a slow fire, and when very succulent, thicken with kneaded butter (No. 579); cover the fish with some of the sauce and serve the remainder separately.

← No. 1203 Matelote of Canotiers Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1205 Matelote of Fishermen →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a braise disguised as a poach: the carp sits in barely enough liquid to reach halfway up, and the cooking liquor becomes the sauce. Ranhofer assumes you have a fish kettle, a sautoir and a cook to baste every few minutes.

The hinge: never turn the fishA whole braised carp will break apart if lifted or flipped. Baste it often instead, and move it from tin to platter with the large perforated skimmer the recipe specifies, or with two long spatulas.
Oven temperatureRanhofer gives no figures; "moderate oven" is usually read today as roughly 325-350F. A 3-4 lb carp needs about 30-40 minutes there after the initial stovetop boil, to an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest part behind the head.
Fat porkUnsmoked salt pork or fresh pork fatback, sliced thin to line the tin. Bacon substitutes badly here; the smoke overwhelms the wine reduction. Blanch salt pork briefly if it is heavily cured.
Kneaded butter (No. 579)Beurre manie: flour and butter worked together raw, in roughly equal weight, whisked into the reduced liquor off the boil. Start with about 1 tablespoon each per cup of sauce and add in small pieces until it coats a spoon.
Vessel namesThe "narrow low-bordered baking tin" is any shallow flameproof roasting pan just longer than the fish, so the half-height liquid is not diluted across a wide surface. A "sautoir" is a straight-sided saute pan; use any wide pan for fast reduction.
"A glassful" of red wineGenuinely imprecise in the original. Nineteenth-century recipes used "glass" loosely, anywhere from a 2-ounce wineglassful to a 6-ounce tumbler; start at half a cup and taste as the sauce reduces.
Mushroom peelingsTrimmings went into the braising bed for flavor and were strained out; the "very white peeled mushrooms" of the garnish are separate. The recipe does not say how to cook them; butter with a little lemon juice is the usual way to keep them pale.
Drawing and scaling"Draw it by the stomach" means gutting through a belly slit rather than through the gills. Carp scales are large and tenacious; scale under water or in a sink to keep them from flying. Tying the head keeps it from splaying as the fish cooks.
YieldA 3-4 lb carp serves four as a main course, six as one course of a longer meal. Farmed carp is far milder than wild; if using wild fish from muddy water, an hour in salted, acidulated water helps.

A Little History

Matelote comes from matelot, sailor, and named the freshwater fish stews of the Loire, the Marne and the Rhine, cooked in wine with onions and thickened at the last minute — boatmen's food that the professional kitchen took over and refined. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, prints a whole run of them in The Epicurean (1894), each with a different label: canotiers (boatmen), pêcheurs (fishermen), and this one, miroir, mirror — often said, though it is only a plausible guess, to refer to the glossy, unbroken sheet of reduced sauce poured over the whole fish rather than to any particular garnish. Carp was still a serious market fish in America then, farmed in ponds since the Middle Ages in Europe and stocked widely in United States waters in the 1870s and 1880s; its near-disappearance from restaurant menus since says more about changing fashion than about the fish.