No. 1295

Trout a la Meuniere

Truites a la Meuniere

Procure several four-ounce trout, scale, draw and season, cut an incision on the thickest part of the fillet, roll the fish in flour. Heat some butter in a frying pan over a moderate fire, lay in the trout and cook while turning them over, drain and dress on a dish leaving the butter in the pan, and to it add a few spoonfuls of melted butter; cook this to hazelnut (No. 567), then remove the pan from the fire, put into it a coffeespoonful of anchovy essence or a piece of anchovy butter (No. 569) to let it froth, then gradually add two or three teaspoonfuls of vinegar; when hot throw in a pinch of chopped parsley, and pour this butter over the very hot fish.

← No. 1294 Trout a la Joan of Arc Salmon & Trout No. 1296 Trout a la Montagnarde →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic meunière in Ranhofer's shorthand: he assumes you know his cross-referenced numbers and that your cook has a pan of clarified butter standing by. The hinge is the second butter — it must reach hazelnut brown and then come off the heat before the anchovy and vinegar go in, or the acid will seize on scorched milk solids and turn bitter.

"Melted butter" means clarified"Melted butter" here is most likely clarified butter — butter rendered and the milk solids strained off — which is what you want for the browning stage, since whole butter added to an already-hot pan will burn before it colours evenly. Ranhofer is not always consistent, though: elsewhere "melted butter" may mean no more than butter liquefied.
Hazelnut butter (No. 567)Beurre noisette: butter cooked until the solids toast and the fat smells of hazelnuts, a deep amber rather than brown. It goes from noisette to burnt in well under a minute, so pull the pan at the first strong nutty smell.
A coffeespoonfulA coffeespoonful is usually reckoned smaller than a teaspoon, perhaps half — though as a translation of the French cuillerée à café it may simply mean a teaspoon. Anchovy essence was a thin bottled extract; anchovy paste from a tube is much more concentrated, so start with a scant half teaspoon and taste.
Anchovy butter (No. 569)Simply pounded anchovy worked into softened butter. A knob of it whisked into the off-heat pan does the seasoning and the frothing at once, and is the more forgiving of the two options.
Four-ounce troutThese are very small pan-dressed fish — Ranhofer gives no yield, but at four ounces each you would want more than one per person. Farmed rainbow trout today run 8-12 oz gutted; one per person, and add two or three minutes a side to the cooking.
The incisionScoring the thickest part of the fillet lets heat into the shoulder so the flesh at the head end finishes at the same moment as the tail. Worth doing on any whole fish over about six ounces.
Moderate fire and timingMedium heat, not high — you want the flour crust to colour slowly while the fish cooks through. Small trout take three to four minutes a side; the fish is done when the flesh at the score parts cleanly from the bone, about 145F at the spine.
Flour at the last momentSeason and flour the trout just before they hit the pan. Fish left sitting in flour draws out moisture and the coating turns pasty rather than crisp.
Vinegar, not lemonModern meunière is almost always finished with lemon. Ranhofer's two or three teaspoons of vinegar — a white wine vinegar suits best — gives a sharper, less perfumed result. Add it gradually, as he says, or the hot fat will spit.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894, near the end of some three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the book reads as a working translation of the French professional kitchen for an American audience. À la meunière means "in the manner of the miller's wife" — the flour dredge is generally taken as the joke in the name, and the method is one of the oldest and plainest ways to treat a freshwater fish: flour, butter, acid, parsley. Ranhofer's version departs from the familiar one in two ways that mark it as nineteenth-century restaurant cooking rather than home cooking: the anchovy, used as a savoury background rather than a flavour you should be able to name, and vinegar in place of lemon. The recipe sits in a long run of trout preparations in the book — Joan of Arc before it, Montagnarde after — each distinguished by little more than the sauce poured over at the end.