No. 1298

Trout, Cooked in Court Bouillon and Served with Different Sauces

Truites Cuites au Court Bouillon et Services avec Differentes Sauces

Prepare a stock with white wine and carrots, onions, celery root, all well shredded, salt, peppercorns, and a bunch of parsley, garnished with half a clove of garlic. Let the liquid boil until the roots are pretty nearly done, then strain it. Lay in a narrow saucepan four medium sized clean trout, moisten them to just their height with the strained stock, cover and cook slowly; when done dress them on a dish, strain the stock, remove the fat, and reduce it to a half-glaze adding to it an equal quantity of Valliere sauce (No. 553), or a Genoise sauce (No. 470) or a Genevoise sauce (No. 469), or gourmets sauce (No. 472), or a well buttered bechamel cream sauce (No. 409), into which has been added a little anchovy essence. Cover the trout with a part of the sauce and serve the rest in a sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a cook who already knows the house sauces, so this reads as a skeleton. The technique itself is straightforward poaching; the useful work is in fixing quantities and heat.

The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep the poaching gentle -- Ranhofer does boil the vegetable stock first, but once the trout go in the liquid should stay well below a boil, roughly 160-175F, with the surface barely shivering. A rolling boil tears the skin, curls the flesh and clouds the stock you are about to reduce into sauce.
Court bouillon quantitiesThe original gives none, and it specifies white wine rather than a wine-and-water mix. As a working guess for four trout: about 6 cups of liquid (all wine as written, or wine cut with water if you want it milder), 1 carrot, 1 onion, half a small celery root, 1 teaspoon salt, 8-10 peppercorns, a parsley bunch and half a garlic clove. Simmer 20-25 minutes before straining.
Celery rootCeleriac, not celery stalks. The two are not interchangeable here; the root gives a rounder, nuttier background that survives reduction.
DonenessThe recipe says only 'medium sized' trout. At a bare simmer, whole trout of that order need about 8-12 minutes; they are done when the flesh pulls cleanly from the backbone. Standard modern guidance for fish is 145F at the thickest point, though many cooks stop poached trout lower, nearer 130-140F, to keep it from going dry and chalky.
"Reduce to a half-glaze"Demi-glace consistency: boil the strained, skimmed poaching liquid hard until it is syrupy and coats a spoon, which from six cups means something under a cup. Skim the fat before reducing, not after.
The numbered saucesValliere, Genoise, Genevoise, gourmets and buttered bechamel are all cross-references to sauce entries elsewhere in the book. Genevoise is a red-wine fish sauce; Genoise here is the book's sauce No. 470, not the sponge cake -- look it up rather than assume its composition. Any decent modern beurre blanc, sauce vin blanc or veloute finished with butter will carry the reduced court bouillon.
Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled anchovy extract. Anchovy paste thinned with a little water, or a teaspoon of colatura, does the same job. Add it off the heat and taste as you go; it salts fast.
Vessel and yield"A narrow saucepan" means one just wide enough to hold the fish so the liquid covers them without your needing gallons of it. A straight-sided sauté pan or small fish kettle works. Serves four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working file made public: over a thousand pages of numbered preparations that refer to one another rather than repeat themselves, which is why this trout entry offers five sauces by number and explains none of them. Court bouillon means "short broth" — a quick aromatic liquid built for a single poaching rather than a long-simmered stock — and the practice of turning that liquid into the sauce, by reduction and enrichment, is the thrift at the center of classical French fish cookery. The sauce names map the trade's geography: Genevoise is generally traced to Geneva and its lake fish, Génoise to Genoa, while Vallière and "gourmets" belong to the house repertoire of nineteenth-century restaurant kitchens. That a single fish could be sent out under any of five sauces says a good deal about how a Delmonico's menu was built — one clean preparation, varied at the saucier's station.