No. 1237

Salmon a l'Argentine

Saumon a l'Argentine

Remove the meats from the fillets of a fish, also the skin; trim them into half inch bias slices, then pare them the shape of a half heart. Range these pieces in a buttered sautoir, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with white wine and a court bouillon (No. 39) or else some mirepoix stock (No. 419). Cover over with a strong buttered paper and set them to cook in a slow oven. As soon as the fish is done, drain off the liquid and reduce it with espagnole sauce (No. 414), to a half-glaze; dress the fillets, pour the sauce over and garnish the center with a very consistent argentine sauce (No. 429).

← No. 1236 Red Snapper a la Princess Salmon & Trout No. 1238 Salmon a la d'Artois—Fillets →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stocks and mother sauces already standing on the range, so most of the work here is in the cross-references rather than the paragraph itself. Read it as a method for gently oven-poaching salmon and finishing it with a reduction.

The hinge: low, gentle heatRanhofer says only "slow oven" and gives no temperature or timing; a low oven in the region of 300F is a reasonable modern reading. Judge doneness by eye, when the flakes just begin to separate. His technique is closer to a braise in barely enough liquid than a simmer; if the wine and stock come to a boil the albumin will curdle out white over the surface.
Sautoir and buttered paperA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan; any wide ovenproof saute pan works. The "strong buttered paper" is a cartouche cut to the pan's diameter and laid directly on the fish, which keeps the exposed surface from drying without steaming it as a lid would.
Court bouillon and mirepoix stockBoth No. 39 and No. 419 must be looked up in the book; the first is an aromatic cooking broth, the second a stock built on mirepoix. Either supplies the aromatics for the poaching liquid. A light fish fumet, or dry white wine cut with a vegetable stock, stands in for both.
EspagnoleNo. 414 is the brown mother sauce, a long-simmered brown roux and veal stock reduction. It is a day's work in itself. A well-reduced brown veal stock, lightly thickened, gives the same body; a jarred "demi-glace" concentrate will read as much saltier, so hold back seasoning until the reduction is finished.
Half-glazeReducing the cooking liquid with espagnole "to a half-glaze" means taking it down until it coats the back of a spoon and leaves a clear track when a finger is drawn through. Strain it before saucing.
Argentine sauceNo. 429 is a separate recipe in the book and must be looked up. The brown reduction is poured over the fish and the argentine sauce, which Ranhofer wants "very consistent", is heaped in the centre of the dish, so it is easiest to have it made and warm before the fish comes out of the oven.
SeasoningRanhofer salts before cooking and again by way of the reduced sauce. Because both the espagnole and the reduction concentrate, season the fish lightly at the start and correct only at the end.

A Little History

This is entry 1237 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the encyclopedic record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The book's structure explains the recipe's terseness: nearly every element is a numbered cross-reference, so a single dish is really an instruction to assemble four or five preparations already codified elsewhere in the volume, exactly as a kitchen with a stock pot, a sauce cook and a fish cook would have worked. The name is a garnish name rather than a geographic one, in the French manner where a dish is titled for the sauce that finishes it; Ranhofer himself offers no explanation of it. Salmon at this period was treated as a luxury fish worth the full apparatus of espagnole and court bouillon.