No. 1294

Trout a la Joan of Arc

Truites a la Jeanne d'Arc

Remove the fillets and skin from several quarter of a pound trout, put them in a dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, bay leaf, parsley and minced onions, let marinate for two hours, then take out and dip into melted butter, roll them in bread-crumbs and broil over the fire, dress, sprinkle with cayenne butter (No. 571) and serve separately a veloute sauce (No. 415), finished with crawfish butter (No. 573) and lemon juice; strain through a tammy.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has the compound butters and the velouté standing by, so the work here is mostly in the cross-references. The dish itself is quick: a short marinade, crumbs, and a few minutes over fire.

The hinge: dry the filletsLift them from the marinade and blot them properly before they go into the melted butter. Oil and vinegar clinging to the flesh will keep the crumbs from setting and they will slough off on the grill bars.
"Quarter of a pound trout"About 4 oz whole fish, a small pan trout yielding two slim skinned fillets of roughly 1 oz each. Allow two fish per person. Modern farmed trout commonly run 8-12 oz; use them and treat each fillet as a single portion, adjusting the broiling time upward slightly.
Marinade proportionsNone are given, in the manner of the period. A working ratio is three parts oil to one part vinegar, enough to coat, with one bay leaf, a spoonful each of chopped parsley and onion, and salt and pepper. Two hours is the stated time and is ample for fish this thin.
"Broil over the fire"This means a live charcoal fire, not a modern oven broiler. Skinned, crumbed fillets are fragile: use a well-oiled hinged fish grill or a grill basket, cook 2 to 3 minutes a side over high heat, and turn once only. Under a gas broiler at full heat they need no turning at all.
Cayenne butter (No. 571)A compound butter: softened butter worked with cayenne. The cross-referenced recipe is not reproduced here, so the exact method is unverified; the instruction to "sprinkle" it over the broiled fish indicates it is applied soft or melted as a finishing butter, not used as a cooking fat.
Crawfish butter (No. 573)Made by pounding cooked crawfish shells and trimmings with butter, warming it, and straining. Whole crawfish are sold live or frozen; shrimp shells give a serviceable substitute for the same purpose, which is colour and shellfish perfume in the sauce.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux loosened with stock -- white veal or chicken stock, or fish stock for a fish dish -- not milk; the modern white sauce is not the same thing. Whisk the crawfish butter and lemon juice in off the heat so the butter does not break, then strain.
"Strain through a tammy"A tammy is a worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people in a professional kitchen. A fine chinois, or a conical sieve lined with muslin, does the same job.
ServiceThe sauce goes to the table separately, as the recipe directs. Serving it apart also keeps the crumb coating from softening, which it would do sitting in velouté.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire he cooked during his years at Delmonico's in New York -- service that came in two spells, with a break between them -- and it is stiff with dishes named after historical figures, royalty and regular patrons -- a naming habit inherited from the French grande cuisine of Carême and his successors, where an appellation conferred prestige rather than described a method. Jeanne d'Arc appears among these names, and it is often suggested that French national feeling after 1870 encouraged such patriotic labels; in any case, the connection between the Maid of Orléans and a crumbed trout with crawfish butter is one of fashion, not of substance. What is substantial is the structure: a marinade, a butter-and-crumb coating, a compound butter for the fish and a shellfish-enriched velouté served apart. That layering of two separate butters and a mother sauce over a fish weighing four ounces is a fair measure of what an American luxury restaurant kitchen was expected to do in the 1890s, when labour was cheap and cross-references to numbered preparations meant the components were already made and waiting.