No. 1293

Trout a la Hussarde

Truites a la Hussarde

Each trout to weigh a quarter of a pound; split them through the entire back, take out the middle bone and lay them on a dish, season with salt, mignonette, thyme, bay leaf, oil and lemon juice; two hours later lift them out of their marinade. Mix into some fresh butter a quarter as much cooked fine herbs (No. 385), garnish the inside of the fish with this, and wrap them up in a sheet of buttered double paper, put them to cook in a slow oven for twenty minutes, then unwrap and dress over a white poivrade sauce (No. 522).

← No. 1292 Trout a l'Hoteliere Salmon & Trout No. 1294 Trout a la Joan of Arc →

For the Modern Kitchen

A small boned trout, marinated, stuffed with herb butter and baked in paper. The whole point is the paper parcel, which steams the fish in its own butter, so seal it well and do not open it early.

Fish sizeQuarter-pound trout are smaller than most fishmongers sell today. Modern farmed rainbow trout run 8-12 oz each, so allow one per person and add about 5 minutes to the cooking; the recipe fixes the weight of each fish but says nothing about the number served per person.
Boning through the backCut down either side of the dorsal fin from head to tail and lift out the backbone with the rib bones attached, leaving the belly intact. This is the classic way to get a pocket for stuffing, and a flexible boning knife makes it far easier than a chef's knife.
MignonetteMignonette (poivre mignonnette) is coarsely cracked white or mixed peppercorns, not a fine grind and not a sauce. Crush the corns under a pan bottom rather than grinding them.
The marinadeOil, lemon juice, salt, thyme and bay for two hours is ample for fish this small; longer and the acid begins to firm and whiten the flesh. Lift the fish from the marinade and wipe them before buttering.
Cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Ranhofer's cooked fines herbes is a butter-sweated herb preparation, generally nearer a dry duxelles than raw chopped herbs; check No. 385 for the exact composition. If you are not working from the cross-reference, a tablespoon of such a mixture beaten into 4 tablespoons of soft butter matches his one-to-four proportion.
Buttered double paperTwo sheets of paper buttered on the inside is cooking en papillote. Use parchment, buttered, folded and crimped tight, or a double layer if it is thin; foil works but transmits heat faster, so check at 15 minutes.
OvenThe book gives no temperatures; "slow oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 300F. Twenty minutes suits a 4 oz boned trout; for 10 oz fish expect 25-30 minutes. Cooks aiming for flesh just opaque at the thickest point pull it at around 125-130F, though official guidance for fish is 145F.
White poivradePoivrade is a peppery sauce, normally a brown one; how the white version at No. 522 is built is not stated here, so consult the cross-reference. Dress the unwrapped trout over the sauce, as directed.

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 how the book works: a numbered recipe that assumes you will turn to two other numbers for the herb preparation and the sauce. A la hussarde, "in the Hussar style," is one of the many nineteenth-century garnish names borrowed from military dress and cavalry regiments; the classic hussarde garnishes are generally associated with onion and horseradish, and the tidy fit with the peppery poivrade here is a matter of inference rather than rule. Cooking in buttered paper was standard restaurant technique long before the puffed papillote became a tableside spectacle, and it earned its place for a plain reason: a small boned trout dries out in seconds in open heat, while a sealed parcel in a slack oven holds the butter and the herbs against the flesh until the moment it is opened.