No. 2335

Quenelles of Salmon—Stuffed

Quenelles de Saumon Fourrees

Fasten on to the center of an entree dish a wooden bottom an inch and a half in thickness; cover it with a thin flat of noodle paste (No. 142); in the middle of this fasten a small round support cut sloping, and on top set a small basket, all of these being covered with noodle paste; the inside must also be covered, and the outside with ornamental leaves cut from the same paste. Egg over this paste and dry it for a few hours. Prepare a forcemeat with ten ounces of salmon, eight ounces of panada (No. 121), eight ounces of lobster butter (No. 580) and four egg-yolks; rub it through a sieve and when very smooth try a small piece to rectify if necessary; let this harden on the ice for twenty minutes, stirring it frequently. Make a fine truffled montglas with mushrooms and truffles thickened with a good veloute sauce (No. 415), reduced and finished with a few tablespoonfuls of fish glaze (No. 399); let this preparation get cold and divide into small parts and roll into long-shaped olives. Have the forcemeat very smooth and form it into quenelles with a spoon (No. 155), and stuffing each one with a little montglas poach them in salted water, drain on a cloth and decorate the smoothest side with a truffle lozenge, fastening it on with a little of the uncooked forcemeat. Dress these quenelles in a circle around the base on the dish, inclining them somewhat; fill the basket with small truffles, cover the quenelles lightly with a little good lean veloute sauce (No. 416) reduced with fish court-bouillon (No. 38) and mushroom broth, having a separate sauce-boat of the same sauce. The truffles in the basket may be replaced by mushrooms or a small pyramid of crawfish tails or shrimps dressed around a bed of fresh parsley.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's presentation piece: a decorative pedestal of dried noodle paste, a ring of stuffed salmon dumplings, and a basket of truffles on top. The eating part — the quenelles and their sauce — stands on its own if you leave the architecture out.

The hinge: poach, never boilSalmon forcemeat bound with egg yolk and butter will break and turn spongy in agitated water. Hold the salted water at 170-180F, barely trembling, and give the quenelles 8-12 minutes depending on size.
The wooden bottom and basketAn inch-and-a-half wooden socle covered in egg-washed noodle paste and dried for hours is a serving stand, not food. Nothing about the dish requires it; dress the quenelles in a ring on a warm platter with the garnish in the center.
PanadaRanhofer's No. 121 is a thick cooked paste of the usual type, flour or bread with milk and butter, cooked stiff and then cooled. It is the binder that keeps the forcemeat from weeping. Eight ounces to ten ounces of fish is a high proportion by modern taste — a lighter mousseline of salmon, cream and egg white gives a similar result with less starch.
Lobster butterSoftened butter pounded with lobster shells and coral, then strained. It supplies most of the color and much of the flavor. Shell butter made from shrimp or crawfish shells does the same job; plain butter leaves the quenelles pale and flat.
MontglasA stuffing of finely diced truffle and mushroom (classically with tongue and foie gras) bound in reduced velouté. It must be cold and firm enough to roll into olive shapes before it goes inside the forcemeat, or it will melt out during poaching.
Test before you commitThe instruction to poach a small piece and "rectify" is the most useful line in the recipe. One trial quenelle tells you whether the mix needs more panada for body, more butter for richness, or salt.
Forming with two spoonsForming with spoons -- The recipe sends you to Ranhofer's No. 155 for shaping. The usual method is to dip spoons in hot water, scoop, and pass the forcemeat from one to the other to shape an oval. Keep the bowl of forcemeat over ice while you work.
The sauceLean velouté reduced with fish court-bouillon and mushroom broth is, in practice, a fish velouté finished until it coats. Make it in advance and hold it warm; it should nap the quenelles thinly, with the rest passed separately.
YieldThe forcemeat comes to something over a pound and a half once panada, butter and yolks are counted, which will give a couple of dozen spoon quenelles or more, enough for a course in the old sense — a light dish between others, not a main plate.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and the socle-and-basket construction here shows the kind of formal service plate the period favored: food arranged around a built stand, meant to be seen down the length of a table before anyone touched it. The quenelle itself is older and humbler in origin — the word is generally traced to the German Knödel, dumpling, and the technique is usually said to have come into French kitchens by way of Alsace and Lyon before haute cuisine refined it into a smooth pounded forcemeat shaped between spoons. Montglas, the truffled filling used here, is one of a family of nineteenth-century garnish names attached to aristocratic households; it is generally a salpicon of tongue, mushroom, truffle and foie gras bound in a reduced sauce. That salmon appears in an elaborate dressed entrée rather than as a plain roast fish reflects its standing in the period: Atlantic salmon reached New York by rail and ice, and a restaurant kitchen treated it as material worth building on.