No. 1302

Salmon Trout-a l'Antoinette

Truite Saumonee-a l'Antoinette

This fish has the color and taste of the salmon. Toward the middle of spring it leaves the ocean to ascend the rivers; this trout is easily digested and is of an exquisite flavor. Our American species is very inferior in quality to those of Europe; they are much larger, and their meat not as red, nor can the taste be compared; therefore epicures are generally disappointed when eating our salmon trout.

A l'Antoinette.-Score the fish and marinate it in salt, mignonette, lemon juice, chopped onions, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf. Drain and roll it in flour, then in beaten eggs, and finally in bread-crumbs; fry in clarified butter, and serve with a separate sauce made as follows. Have one pint of veloute (No. 415), incorporate into it two ounces of anchovy butter (No. 569), salt, pepper, and nutmeg; heat and thicken with two egg-yolks and cream, pass it through a tammy, and serve with capers and shrimp tails.

← No. 1301 Trout, Stuffed Salmon & Trout No. 1303 Tunny Fish or Horse Mackerel-Fried-with Arro →

For the Modern Kitchen

A breaded, pan-fried whole fish with a rich anchovy velouté served alongside. Ranhofer assumes you have the two cross-referenced preparations already on hand, so the work is front-loaded.

The hinge: the liaison must not boilOnce the egg yolks and cream go into the velouté, hold it below a simmer — around 180F. Boiling curdles the yolks and the sauce breaks into grains no amount of straining will fix.
MignonetteNot the vinegar-shallot sauce for oysters. In this book mignonette means coarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, used in the marinade for the fish.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond-roux sauce slackened with stock and simmered until it coats a spoon; see No. 415 for the stock and proportions Ranhofer specifies. Nothing here says whether the pint is measured before or after reduction.
Anchovy butter (No. 569)Anchovies pounded smooth with butter and passed through a sieve; check No. 569 for the proportions. Two ounces will salt the sauce considerably, so taste before adding the salt the recipe calls for.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine worsted straining cloth; the sauce was wrung through it. A fine chinois with a ladle pressed against it does the same job.
Clarified butterSpecified because whole butter's milk solids scorch long before a whole fish is cooked through. Clarified butter tolerates a considerably higher pan heat, which is what breadcrumbs want.
Marinating timeNo duration is given. Thirty minutes to an hour is enough for a scored fish; longer and the lemon juice begins to firm and whiten the surface flesh before it ever meets the pan.
ScoringThe recipe says only to score the fish: a few diagonal cuts through the skin on each side. They let the marinade in and keep the skin from buckling as it fries.
Shrimp tailsPeeled, cooked shrimp — in period usage the tail is the whole body meat, not the fan. Add them and the capers to the sauce off the heat.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield or fish weight. A pint of sauce with a fish of two to three pounds would plausibly serve four as a main course, or six as a fish course in a longer menu.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the headnote here is characteristic of him: a brisk verdict that the American fish is inferior to the European one. He is comparing the anadromous sea trout of European rivers — the same species as brown trout, but sea-run and pink-fleshed from a marine diet — with what Americans called salmon trout, a name applied loosely to lake trout and to various char and Pacific species, none of which behave or taste the same. Dishes named for women were a standing convention of nineteenth-century restaurant French, and Ranhofer's book is full of them; the names generally commemorate a patron or a proprietor's whim rather than anything traceable, and no particular Antoinette has been documented behind this one. What the recipe does record reliably is the house method: fry the fish plainly, put the expense and the labor into a sauce built on two preparations already standing in the kitchen.