No. 2536

Mousseline of Kingfish a la Briere

Mousseline de Kingfish a la Briere

Scale two or three fresh kingfish, weighing about two pounds; suppress the head and thin tail end, the fins and gills. Put into a sautoir two soupspoonfuls of chopped onions and shallots, add half a pound of clarified butter cooked to hazelnut (No. 567) and fry the onions and shallots lightly; put in the well-wiped fish and season with salt, nutmeg, a dash of cayenne, a pinch of thyme leaves and bay leaf; fry over a brisk fire until done. Remove the skin, pour the whole into a sieve laid over a large dish, so as to be able to collect all the liquid and butter, and let this as well as the fish get cold on ice. Take all the bones out of the fish and pound the meat, adding gradually the well-strained butter and liquid, also a few spoonfuls of good bechamel sauce (No. 409) reduced with the fish stock. Press this forcemeat through a sieve and smooth it in a vessel, mixing in with it slowly a few spoonfuls of very thick jelly (No. 103); try a small part of this preparation in a small mold on ice, and if not quite firm add more dissolved jelly until perfectly thick. When cold on the ice incorporate into it slowly about one pint of very firmly whipped cream, drained and sugarless. Stir the preparation again for a few moments, then pour it into a high mold incrusted on ice, coated with jelly, and bestrew with chervil leaves; let the mousseline harden for a couple of hours and at the last moment dip the mold into hot water so as to easily unmold it on a rice foundation two inches high; fill the bottom of the dish with half-set jelly, surround the foundation with quartered hard-boiled eggs standing erect, and these with a string of chopped jelly or jelly croutons. Serve at the same time a sauce-boat of mayonnaise (No. 606), finished with tarragon and chopped chervil.

← No. 2535 Mousselines of Foiles-Gras a la Dana Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2537 Mousseline of Lobster →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold fish mousse from the Delmonico's kitchen, built on the same logic as a modern mousseline: cooked fish pounded with fat, bound with aspic, lightened with whipped cream. Most of the work is temperature control.

The hinge: test the set before you commitRanhofer's instruction to chill a spoonful in a small mold on ice and add more dissolved jelly if it is not firm is the whole recipe in miniature. Gelatin strength varies, and fish purée thinned with butter and béchamel will slump if underset; do this test before the cream goes in, because once the cream is folded you cannot reheat to add more.
KingfishIn 1890s New York markets this meant northern kingfish (whiting, Menticirrhus saxatilis), a small firm-fleshed drum. Any lean firm white fish works — whiting, hake, cod, haddock — about 2 lb whole, roughly 1 lb of picked flesh.
Sautoir and "butter cooked to hazelnut"A sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan. Butter cooked to hazelnut is beurre noisette: clarified butter taken to a pale brown with a nutty smell, stopped before it darkens.
Half a pound of butterThat is 8 oz for about a pound of fish. The fish is drained through a sieve and the strained butter and cooking liquid are then worked back in gradually, as you would with a mayonnaise he emuluse breaks; add it cold and slowly.
Soupspoonful and "very thick jelly"Soupspoonful and "very thick jelly" -- A soupspoonful is a tablespoon. The jelly is Ranhofer's No. 103, an aspic jelly; a firm, well-clarified aspic melted to a syrup is the working equivalent. "A few spoonfuls" is genuinely imprecise here, which is exactly why he tells you to test.
Mold "incrusted on ice"Mold "incrusted on ice" -- The mold is packed in crushed ice (salt was often added to bring the temperature down), then lined with a thin set coat of clear aspic before the chervil leaves are laid in and the mousse poured. A refrigerator does the same job more slowly; chill the coated mold thoroughly between steps.
UnmoldingA dip in hot water means a two- or three-second dip, no more. Longer and the aspic coat liquefies and takes the chervil pattern with it.
The rice foundationA two-inch socle of rice cooked to a stiff paste and pressed into a block — a decorative pedestal in the period grand style, not really intended as eating. A shallow chilled platter or a plain glass stand serves the same purpose.
Serving and holdingEnough for a buffet platter of eight to ten as one cold dish among several. It is a gelatin-set fish preparation with cream in it: keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes out, and do not let it stand at room temperature through a long meal.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in the chapter of cold garnished dishes — the aspic-glazed, socle-mounted centerpieces that defined a formal cold buffet in the late nineteenth century. The mousseline itself is a French technique of the period: pounded flesh passed through a sieve, bound with aspic rather than starch, and lifted with unsweetened whipped cream, the ancestor of the fish mousses that survived into mid-twentieth-century restaurant cooking. The kingfish, by contrast, is entirely local; Ranhofer worked constantly with Atlantic species that had no French name, and slotted them into classical formulas. The garnish tag "à la Brière" has no established explanation: Ranhofer left no note about it, and the origin of the name remains unknown.