No. 1304

Canadian Turbot a la d'Orleans

Turbot Canadien a la d'Orleans

Raise the fillets and skin from the fish; trim and pare into half hearts, then lay them in a buttered sautoir; season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, adding butter and white wine, then cook it over a hot fire, basting frequently while cooking. Dress on a decorated forcemeat border and fill in the inside with mushroom heads, crawfish tails and slices of truffle between each fillet. Make a veloute sauce (No. 415) with the stock and cream, run it through a tammy and pour half of it over the fish, serving the other half in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1303 Tunny Fish or Horse Mackerel-Fried-with Arro Sole, Flounder & Turbot No. 1305 Canadian Turbot a la Houston →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot and a garde-manger already running, so the recipe assumes a great deal. The hinge is the cooking: this is a shallow butter-and-wine braise, not a saute, and the fillets should come out just set and still juicy.

The fish"Canadian turbot" in this period is generally taken to mean Greenland halibut rather than the European turbot of the Channel, though the usage is hard to pin down precisely. Any firm white flatfish fillet works; halibut, brill or thick sole are all reasonable. Allow about 6 oz per person.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan with a lid, roughly what we would call a saute pan. Butter it well, lay the fillets in a single layer, and add wine to come no more than a third of the way up.
"Cook over a hot fire, basting"On a modern range, a brisk but not boiling simmer in the uncovered pan, basting as the recipe directs. Half-inch fillets are done in 6-8 minutes; a full boil will curdle the pan juices and break the fish apart.
Half heartsA classical decorative trim, each fillet pared to a half-heart shape. Purely decorative, and skipping it costs the dish nothing but the look.
Forcemeat borderA pike or whiting quenelle forcemeat piped around the edge of the serving dish and set in the oven or under a salamander before the fish goes in. A ring of duchesse potato piped and browned is the usual modern stand-in.
Mushroom headsButton caps, stems removed, cooked in butter with lemon juice to keep them white; fluting them would not be out of place in a kitchen of this kind. Crawfish tails are cooked and peeled, not raw.
Veloute No. 415 and the tammyA velouté thickened with a blond roux, let down here with the fish's cooking liquid and cream as the recipe directs. The tammy was a cloth strained by twisting, often by two pairs of hands; a fine chinois or a doubled square of muslin does the same job. Reduce the pan liquid before adding it to the sauce or the finished coating will be thin.
TruffleFresh black truffle is a serious expense and canned truffle contributes little beyond colour. Thin slices of a good preserved truffle, or nothing at all, are both defensible; the dish still reads as intended.
YieldNo quantities are given; as a service platter it would suit roughly four to six. Half the sauce goes over the fish, the rest to the table in a boat.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style plainly: a plain fillet raised to occasion by a piped border, a garnish of mushroom, crawfish and truffle, and a cream-finished veloute split between plate and sauce-boat. Names like "a la d'Orleans" in this book are garnish labels rather than historical attributions -- Ranhofer runs whole strings of them, and the very next entry is a Canadian turbot "a la Houston." The fish itself points to the North Atlantic trade that supplied Delmonico's; Greenland halibut is often said to have been sold in American markets as turbot, and the distinction between it and the European fish was likely blurred then much as it is on fish counters now. Crawfish tails alongside a saltwater flatfish are a reminder that the French repertoire treated garnish as a fixed formula, to be assembled wherever the components could be got.