No. 2307

"pain" of Pike

Pain de Brochet

Pound to a pulp half a pound of pike meat, and press it through a sieve; work it in a mortar with half a pound of fresh butter, two ounces of sifted flour, salt and allspice; mix in gradually four eggs, and a pint of cream, and set this preparation into small buttered molds, cover over with a buttered paper, and close the lid; but should the molds not be provided with covers, then lay over a sheet of buttered paper, on top set a tray with a weight on it, and cook them in a bain-marie kept at the boiling point for an hour and a half. Unmold, dress, and serve separately either a Madeira sauce (No. 492) or else a lobster sauce (No. 488), but to either one or the other add some mushrooms, lobster cut in fillets and small nonpareil capers. The "pains" may be surrounded by crawfish tails or carp's milts sauted in butter with fine herbs.

← No. 2306 "pain" of Pheasant with Cream Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2308 "pain" of Young Rabbits a la Maintenon →

For the Modern Kitchen

A pike mousseline baked in molds and turned out — the ancestor of the modern fish terrine. The proportions are rich even by nineteenth-century standards, and the cooking instruction is the part that most needs revising.

Bone the pike ruthlesslyPike is full of fine Y-shaped intermuscular bones that a modern sieve will not catch reliably. Skin and fillet, then scrape the flesh from the bones with a spoon, or press the puree through a drum sieve as directed rather than trusting a processor alone.
Mortar to food processorHalf a pound of fish, the butter and the flour can be worked in a processor, but keep everything refrigerator-cold and pulse rather than run. Warm butter breaks the emulsion and the pain turns greasy and dense.
Add the cream slowlyA pint is two cups against only half a pound of fish — a very loose mixture. Beat it in a little at a time with the bowl set over ice; poach a teaspoonful in simmering water to test the set before filling the molds.
Allspice, not mixed spiceRanhofer's "allspice" is ground pimento berry, used with a light hand as a warm background note. A pinch for the whole mixture is plenty; more and it reads as gingerbread.
The bain-marie should not boil"Kept at the boiling point" for ninety minutes risks curdling a custard this rich. Hold the water well below a simmer, around 170-180F, and cook until the centers are just set and have reached at least 145F. Depending on the size of the molds this will likely be far short of the hour and a half specified, so start checking early.
Weight the paper, not the mousseThe tray and weight appear to be there mainly to hold the buttered paper down and stop steam lifting it rather than to compress the mixture. A sheet of buttered parchment or foil laid directly on each mold will generally do the same job.
The saucesNos. 492 and 488 are Ranhofer's Madeira and lobster sauces elsewhere in the book; any good Madeira-fortified brown sauce or a classic lobster-shell sauce serves. The mushrooms, lobster fillets and nonpareil capers are the point of the garnish and should not be left out.
Carp milts and crawfishMilt (soft roe) is sold now mainly by specialist fishmongers and Japanese suppliers. Crawfish tails, or plain shrimp sauteed in butter with parsley and chervil, fill the same role.
YieldThe quantities make roughly six to eight individual dariole molds, served as a first course with the sauce passed separately.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, numbering every preparation so that one recipe could cross-reference another — hence the sauce numbers left bare here. A pain in French kitchen usage is a forcemeat bound with eggs and cream, baked in a mold and unmolded like a loaf; it sits between the quenelle and the modern terrine, and pounded-fish preparations of this kind are closely associated with the pike quenelles of Lyon. Pike suits the treatment: the flesh is lean and white, and binds a large quantity of butter and cream. Presenting it pounded, sieved, molded and sauced with Madeira and lobster was precisely the transformation the restaurant was selling.