No. 1297

Trout au Bleu-Small

Petites Truites au Bleu

Small brook trout live where the water is rapid and pure. There exist certain reservoirs, for instance at the Saratoga Club, where each day the fisherman bring the product of their catch, so that amateurs of good fish may always have on hand trout to be killed just when ready to use; this is an excellent method to bring out all the good qualities of its meat.

The various ways of cooking this fish are most simple; kill the trout by knocking their heads against a hard substance, open the belly to draw, clip off the gills and wash out the inside. Plunge into boiling water, salted and acidulated with vinegar, and as soon as it reboils, remove the saucepan to the side of the fire to keep the liquid in a bubbling state only for fifteen minutes. Drain the trout, dress it on a napkin, and garnish with parsley and potatoes. Serve at the same time fresh and melted butter. Cooked in this manner the trout may become twisted and broken, but this does not interfere with its good quality.

← No. 1296 Trout a la Montagnarde Salmon & Trout No. 1298 Trout, Cooked in Court Bouillon and Served w →

For the Modern Kitchen

A whole-fish poach that depends almost entirely on the freshness of the trout and the gentleness of the water. Two details in the original need correcting for a modern cook.

The blue depends on the slimeAu bleu gets its name from the faint blue-grey cast the skin takes on when the natural coating on a very freshly killed fish meets acidulated water. Do not scale, rinse the outside, or handle the flanks more than necessary — a wiped fish simply poaches grey. Farmed trout bought on ice a day or two old will not blue at all, though it will still eat well.
Fifteen minutes is far too longThe recipe gives no weight for the fish. A 6-10 oz brook trout in barely trembling water is done in about 4-6 minutes; the flesh should just part from the backbone at the thickest point. Fifteen minutes gives dry, cottony fish.
"Bubbling state only"This means a bare simmer with the pan pulled to the side of the heat, with movement in the water but no rolling boil. A hard boil tears the skin and curls the fish; the recipe itself warns that the trout may twist and break.
The court bouillon proportionsNo quantities are given. Roughly 1 tablespoon salt and 3-4 tablespoons white wine vinegar per quart of water gives an acidity strong enough to set the skin without tasting pickled. Use a pan wide enough to hold the fish flat and just cover them.
Killing the fishThe instruction to knock the heads against a hard substance goes with the recipe's premise that the trout are kept alive and killed just before cooking. If you are dispatching your own catch, a firm blow to the head followed immediately by gutting is still the standard; if buying, ask for the fish gutted but not scaled or rinsed.
Garnish and butter"Fresh and melted butter" means both cold butter at table and a jug of plain melted butter, not a beurre blanc. The recipe specifies only parsley and potatoes; plain boiled potatoes suit it. The napkin is a folded linen cloth on the platter to absorb draining liquid.
YieldOne trout of 6-10 oz per person as a main course; two smaller fish each if they run under 6 oz.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the mention of the Saratoga Club is a piece of period reporting rather than color: the club evidently kept live trout on hand so that the fish could be killed to order, the whole point of a dish that cannot be made properly from a fish that has been on ice. Truite au bleu is often said to have come from Alpine and Jura inn cooking, where trout went straight from the stream into the pot, and it survived into grand-restaurant service precisely because it advertised freshness: a kitchen serving a blued trout was announcing that it had live fish on the premises. Ranhofer's shrug at the end, that the fish may twist and break but is no worse for it, is characteristic: the contraction of a genuinely fresh trout in hot water was read as proof of quality, not as a fault.