No. 2346

Shells of Fish

Coquilles de Poisson

Cook a prepared sea bass in a court-bouillon (No. 38), then drain, suppress the skin and bones and only use the meat after shredding it well; reduce some veloute sauce (No. 415) with mushroom essence (No. 392) and the court-bouillon; season properly and thicken with egg-yolks and butter, then stir in the fish. Butter some shells (Fig. 438), besprinkle with bread-crumbs, fill them with the fish preparation, having the tops slightly dome-form; bestrew with bread-crumbs and grated parmesan, baste over with butter, then brown in the oven; serve as soon as they have attained a good color.

← No. 2345 Shells of Chicken or Sweetbreads Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2347 Shells of Frogs' Legs →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen with a stocked garde-manger, so the recipe reads as three cross-references. Assembled in a modern kitchen it is poached fish bound in a rich velouté, gratinéed in shells.

The hinge: the egg-yolk liaisonOnce the yolks and butter go in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle and break under the broiler. Take the reduced velouté off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of it, return it and stir over low heat only until it coats the spoon.
Court-bouillonNo. 38 is the book's court-bouillon; such preparations are generally water acidulated with wine or vinegar with aromatic vegetables and herbs, but the page itself gives no composition. Poach the bass at a bare shiver, around 170-180F, until it flakes; a hard boil shreds it into cotton.
VeloutéNo. 415 is a blond roux slackened with stock and simmered until glossy; the stock is not specified on this page. A modern cook can make a small batch: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, cooked without colour, then 1 1/2 cups fish stock, simmered 20 minutes and strained.
Mushroom essenceNo. 392 is, by its name, a mushroom concentrate; the page does not give its method. Substitute the strained liquid from a handful of mushrooms sweated in butter and deglazed with stock, reduced hard; a spoonful of dried-mushroom soaking liquid does the same work.
Reduce, do not drownThe velouté is reduced with both the mushroom essence and some of the poaching liquid, which means it should end up thick enough to hold a dome on the shell. If the mixture slumps, keep reducing before the yolks go in.
The shellsFig. 438 illustrates the shells called for; scallop shells, natural or metal imitations of them, were the usual vessel. Deep scallop shells, small gratin dishes or 4 oz ramekins all work; butter and crumb them as directed so the mixture lifts cleanly.
BrowningThe book gives no temperature; 'brown in the oven' implies a hot oven, or a broiler a few inches from the element. The filling is already cooked, so this is colour only: 'serve as soon as they have attained a good color' -- a few minutes at most.
YieldA whole sea bass yields well under half its weight in picked meat, so a 1 1/2 lb fish gives roughly 10 oz, enough for perhaps four to six shells as a first course. The recipe itself specifies no quantities.

A Little History

Coquilles are one of the tidiest solutions in nineteenth-century service: cooked fish, poultry or sweetbreads, bound in a sauce, piled into a shell and browned, which turns yesterday's poached fish into a hot entrée that arrives at the table in its own dish. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system rather than a book of standalone recipes, which is why this entry runs to well under a hundred words and points to three numbered preparations elsewhere in the volume. The run of neighbouring numbers — shells of chicken or sweetbreads before it, shells of frogs' legs after — shows how the form was treated as a template that any cooked protein could be dropped into. The French name for the dish is simply the name of the shell.