No. 1243

Salmon a la Victoria

Saumon a la Victoria

Trim slices of fish, each about half an inch in thickness; cook them in a mirepoix stock (No. 419), moistened with red wine, and when done, which will take from eight to ten minutes, drain them off, and strain the stock; reduce this, and despumate it; just when ready to serve stir in a piece of lobster butter (No. 580). Serve the fish, surrounding it with sauted lobster escalops, and small anchovy tartlets; cover the lobster with half of the sauce, and pour the remainder in a sauce-boat to be served at the same time.

← No. 1242 Salmon a la Moderne Salmon & Trout No. 1244 Salmon-Broiled Slices-Bearnaise Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade: the numbered cross-references stand in for a stock, a compound butter and a garnish that every cook in his kitchen already knew. Here is what the page assumes you have.

Mirepoix stock (No. 419)A brief braising liquid rather than a long-simmered fond: diced carrot, onion, celery and a little ham or bacon sweated in butter, moistened with stock and, here, red wine. Ranhofer gives no quantity; enough liquid to come partway up the slices is the sense of the direction.
Cooking timeEight to ten minutes suits a half-inch slice only if the liquid never goes above a bare shiver, and even then it lands on the firm side of modern taste. Salmon at that thickness is done in three to four minutes in gently simmering liquid; pull it when the centre is still translucent.
DespumateEssentially to skim. As the reduced stock returns to the boil the albumen and fat rise as grey scum; lift it off with a ladle until the surface is clear.
Lobster butter (No. 580)Lobster shells and coral pounded with butter, warmed to draw out the colour, then strained; the proportions vary. It is stirred in off the heat at the last moment, as the recipe directs; if it boils it may separate and the colour dull.
Red wine with salmonNot necessarily an error. Red wine does appear with salmon and trout in nineteenth-century cookery, though less often than white, and here it moistens the mirepoix rather than forming a court-bouillon. Choose something light and low in tannin, and expect the fish to take on a faint grey-mauve cast where the liquid touched it.
Lobster escalopsSlices cut on the bias from a cooked tail, about a quarter inch thick, tossed briefly in hot butter. They are warmed through, not cooked again.
Anchovy tartletsSmall baked pastry shells filled with anchovy butter or a thick anchovy-flavoured forcemeat. Blind-baked barquette or tartlet shells work; fill them at the last moment or the pastry softens.
YieldThe recipe gives none. Figure one slice of about six ounces per person, with two lobster escalops and one tartlet each.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house method in miniature: fish braised in a wine-moistened mirepoix, the liquid reduced into its own sauce, the whole finished with a shellfish butter and dressed with two separate garnishes. Dishes named a la Victoria appear on late nineteenth-century menus, and the name was applied loosely rather than to any fixed formula. The numbered cross-references are the book's defining feature: Ranhofer built it as a working system for professionals, so a single dish can depend on three or four other pages, and readers who own only an excerpt will find the recipe deliberately incomplete.