No. 1239

Salmon a la Daumont

Saumon a la Daumont

Cut slices of fish half an inch thick, more or less, so as to strike the exact joints of the large dorsal bone so that it can be cut through without any resistance, otherwise the fish will be torn and spoiled. Put these slices into a buttered sautoir, season them with salt, whole peppers, branches of parsley, thyme, bay leaf and minced onions; cover with cold water and let cook slowly; suppress the skin and bones, dress the fish and garnish around with mussels, shrimp tails and blanched oysters. Cover the whole with a well buttered Normande sauce (No. 509), and decorate the top with minced truffles heated in a little half-glaze (No. 400) and Madeira, and around with fluted and glazed mushrooms and trussed crawfish.

← No. 1238 Salmon a la d'Artois—Fillets Salmon & Trout No. 1240 Salmon a la Duperre—Darne →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A composed poached-salmon platter from Ranhofer's kitchen, written for cooks who had a stockpot, a sauce station and a garde-manger already going. The whole thing hinges on the cutting: steaks split cleanly at the vertebral joints, not sawn across them.

Cutting the steaksFeel along the backbone for the gaps between vertebrae and set the knife into one before pressing down; a heavy knife or cleaver goes through in one stroke. Cutting into the middle of a vertebra shreds the flesh on either side, which is exactly what the instruction is warning against.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wide enough to hold the steaks in a single layer. Any wide sauté pan or deep skillet with a lid does the job.
Starting in cold waterBeginning cold and bringing it up slowly is deliberate: it firms the fish gently and draws the aromatics into the liquid. Keep it at a bare shiver, 160-170F, never a boil, or the albumin curdles out white.
Cooking timeHalf-inch steaks are done within 6 to 8 minutes of the liquid reaching temperature, at 120-125F at the bone. "Let cook slowly" gives no duration; salmon at that thickness does not need long cooking.
Blanched oystersThirty seconds in their own liquor, just until the edges ruffle, then off the heat. Anything more and they tighten into erasers. Same for the shrimp tails, which should go in already cooked and only be warmed through.
Normande sauceA fish velouté enriched with mushroom and oyster liquor, cream and egg yolks, finished with butter off the heat. It will break if it boils after the yolks go in. "Well buttered" means a generous final mounting, not extra flour.
Half-glazeDemi-glace: reduced brown veal stock. A few spoonfuls with Madeira is enough to gloss the truffles. Canned or jarred truffle peelings stand in acceptably; sliced brown mushrooms cooked down in the Madeira give the colour if not the perfume.
Fluted mushrooms and trussed crawfishFluting is a decorative spiral cut in the cap, glazing a quick turn in butter and a little stock. Trussed crawfish are cooked whole with the tail bent under and the claws tucked, arranged as a border. Both are garnish and can be skipped without harming the dish.
YieldRanhofer gives none. A 3 lb centre-cut piece yields six or seven steaks, which with the shellfish garnish serves six as a first course or four generously as a main.

A Little History

The name belongs to a garnish rather than to a cooking method: à la Daumont, in nineteenth-century French service, meant poached fish under a rich white shellfish sauce with crayfish, mushrooms, truffles and sometimes quenelles arranged around it. It is generally traced to the household of the ducs d'Aumont, whose name also attached to a style of carriage harness, and the spelling wanders between Daumont and d'Aumont across the period cookbooks. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete cross-referenced system — which is why this entry sends you off to numbered recipes for Normande sauce and half-glaze rather than repeating them. The salmon would most likely have been Atlantic fish, and the shellfish border reflects an era when oysters in particular were cheap enough to use as decoration.