No. 1267

Smelts a la Norfolk

Eperlans a la Norfolk

Cut off the heads and thin tail parts from some large smelts; bone, and stuff them with a pike quenelle forcemeat (No. 90) containing raw fine herbs; range them on a buttered baking dish, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and dredge over chopped shallots fried in butter; moisten with white wine, put to cook in a slow oven basting frequently with its own stock; when done drain off the fish, reduce the liquid with veloute (No. 415), skim and season well. Just when ready to serve incorporate into the sauce a little fresh butter and cut up mushrooms.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with stockpots already going, so the two cross-references do most of the work here. Read them first: without a forcemeat and a velouté on hand there is no dish.

The two numbered referencesNo. 90 is Ranhofer's pike quenelle forcemeat, of the usual type: pounded pike bound with panada, egg and butter and sieved smooth. No. 415 is velouté, a blond roux slackened with white stock and simmered until it coats. Any fine fish mousseline (about 8 oz skinless pike, pollock or whiting blitzed cold with an egg white and 1/2 cup cream) and a fish velouté will serve.
Boning smeltsSlit the belly, open the fish flat, and lift the backbone out from the head end; the ribs come with it. Smelts are soft-boned and this goes quickly once you have done three or four. Buy them 5-6 inches long — supermarket smelts are often too small to stuff.
"A slow oven"In period usage roughly 275-325F; call it 300F. The point is to set the forcemeat gently without curdling it or drying the fish, and to let the wine reduce slowly into basting liquor.
TimingRanhofer gives none. Stuffed smelts of this size need roughly 15-18 minutes at 300F; the forcemeat should read 145F and feel springy. Past that the fish shrinks off the stuffing and the quenelle weeps.
"Raw fine herbs"Fines herbes — chervil, parsley, tarragon, chives — chopped and folded into the forcemeat uncooked so they keep their colour and perfume.
White wine quantityUnspecified here. Enough to come a third of the way up the fish, about 1 cup for a dish holding a dozen smelts. It should reduce to a syrupy few tablespoons by the end.
Finishing the sauceReduce the pan liquid hard, whisk in velouté to the consistency you want, then take it off the heat before the butter goes in. Boiling after the monter au beurre breaks the emulsion. The mushrooms should be sautéed separately and added at the last moment or they will grey the sauce.
YieldThree or four large stuffed smelts per person as a fish course; a dozen fish serves four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, cross-referenced like an engineering manual. Smelts were then a cheap and abundant Atlantic fish, netted in spring runs and sold by the quart in American markets; treating them to pike forcemeat and velouté is exactly the kind of elevation Delmonico's traded in. The "à la Norfolk" tag is more often attached to English-inflected preparations than to Virginia, and Norfolk on the English coast had an association with smelts — though as with most of these garnish-names, the link is traditional and not documented. The book files smelts in the same section as shad, herring and mackerel.