No. 1245

Salmon Marinade Sauce

Saumon a la Sauce Marinade

Cut any desired width slices from a medium sized salmon, in a manner to separate the bone at the joint, or about every half inch. Range them on a dish, besprinkle with vinegar and oil, season with salt, peppercorns, thyme, bay leaf, parsley leaves, cloves, mace, and a clove of garlic. Let them marinate in this for two hours, then range the slices on a fish kettle grater, and cover liberally with salt and the marinade; moisten with sufficient cold water to immerse the fish and thirty minutes before serving time, place it on the hot fire to bring the liquid to a boil, then move it aside and keep it at the same degree of heat, but without boiling for eighteen to twenty minutes. Dress the slices on a folded napkin with parsley leaves around; serve a separate sauceboat of lean marinade sauce (No. 496).

← No. 1244 Salmon-Broiled Slices-Bearnaise Sauce Salmon & Trout No. 1246 Salmon—Quarter—Genevoise Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-start poach in its own marinade, from Ranhofer's The Epicurean. The technique is sound; the timing belongs to a period that liked its salmon firm.

The hinge: never let it boilThe liquid is brought up to a boil once, then drawn to the side of the fire and held below a simmer. A rolling boil squeezes albumin out of the muscle in white curds and shreds the flakes apart. Hold the water at 170-180F.
Cut the steaks thickerHalf-inch slices cut at the vertebral joints are thinner than anything sold today. Cut steaks 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick and treat 18 to 20 minutes as the outer limit for those; thin half-inch slices are done in 5 or 6.
DonenessSalmon is at its best pulled at 120-125F at the centre, when the flesh is still translucent at the bone. The original timing was written for fish cooked through to opaque, which is a different dish and a drier one.
Fish kettle graterThe perforated rack that sits inside a long fish kettle, with handles, so the cooked slices can be lifted out whole. A steamer insert, a cake rack in a roasting pan, or a wide sling of doubled cheesecloth all serve the same purpose.
"Cover liberally with salt"Unquantified, and period recipes often salt poaching liquid generously. About 1 tablespoon of salt per quart of water seasons the fish without curing it.
Whole spicesPeppercorns, cloves and mace go in whole and are not eaten. Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg; a blade or two, or a scant pinch of ground, is enough for a marinade this size.
"Lean marinade sauce"Maigre in Ranhofer's usage means made without meat stock or meat glaze, so the sauce stays a fast-day sauce for fish. No. 496 is a separate recipe in the same book; in its place, a well-seasoned vinaigrette with shallot, capers and chopped herbs will stand in.
The folded napkinPoached fish is dressed on a folded linen napkin because it keeps weeping liquid, which would otherwise pool on the platter and thin the sauce.
YieldThe book does not say what size a "medium sized" salmon is. Figure one 6-8 oz steak per person and scale the marinade to the number of slices you actually cut.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894, during his long tenure as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the salmon chapter reads like a service manual: the same fish appears broiled with béarnaise, in a quarter with genevoise, and here poached in its marinade. The method is an old French one, closer to a court bouillon than to a modern marinade, in which the aromatics that flavour the raw fish also become the cooking liquid, so nothing is wasted. Serving the fish with a marinade sauce rather than a butter sauce fits a maigre preparation, suitable for Fridays and Lent, a distinction restaurant menus of the period often observed. Whole mace and cloves in a fish marinade look assertive now, but they appear regularly in nineteenth-century American recipes, where spice was expected to do some of the work that acidity and fresh herbs do today.