No. 2583

Salmon a la Regence, on Socle

Saumon a la Regence sur Socle

Arrange and cook the salmon the same as for Destaing (No. 2580); cover with a very smooth layer of white butter, then with one or two coats of jellied mayonnaise (No. 613). When cold decorate to imitate the head of the fish and ornament the surface with small truffle crescents graduated in size, or else with a large oval medallion about half the length of the salmon. Let the fish be very cold, then cover with a coating of half-set jelly; lay it on a socle and garnish around with a border of halved eggs filled with macedoine (No. 2508); between this border and the fish place lettuce hearts cut in four. Serve a well-seasoned printaniere mayonnaise (No. 612) with the salmon.

← No. 2582 Salmon a la Modern, on Socle Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2584 Salmon a la Seymour →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly and decoration procedure rather than a cooking recipe: the salmon is poached and cooled elsewhere (No. 2580), and everything here happens cold. The hinge is temperature — every coating must set hard before the next goes on, and the fish must never sit at room temperature while you work.

Work cold, in stagesButter layer, two coats of jellied mayonnaise, decoration and the final jelly glaze each need a spell in the refrigerator. Cooked salmon sitting out for an hour of decorating is the real risk in a dish like this; chill between every step and return the fish to the cold the moment a coat has set.
"White butter" here is not beurre blanc"White butter" here is almost certainly not beurre blanc -- in cold work of this kind the term appears to mean butter creamed until pale and spreadable, smoothed over the fish as a base that fills hollows and gives the mayonnaise something to grip. A warm shallot-and-wine sauce would make little sense on a cold salmon.
Jellied mayonnaiseMayonnaise collee: mayonnaise slackened with melted, still-liquid aspic and used at the point where it coats a spoon but has not begun to set. The recipe gives no proportions, so work by feel and apply in thin coats.
Half-set jellyThe finishing glaze is clear aspic cooled until syrupy and only just beginning to thicken. Poured too warm it will slide off or spoil the mayonnaise underneath; poured too cold it goes on in lumps. Catch the drips on a tray and re-melt them for a second pass.
SocleThe pedestal the fish stands on. In the period these were carved from rice paste, tallow, wax or bread and were not eaten. A shallow platter, a slab of set aspic, or an inverted dish covered in jelly does the same job now.
Truffle crescentsCut from thin slices of black truffle with a plain round cutter, overlapping two cuts. Truffle peelings from a tin work for small crescents; for the large oval medallion you need whole slices, so budget accordingly or substitute thin rounds of black olive, which read the same at a distance.
Macedoine and printaniereMacedoine (No. 2508) is a dice of vegetables such as carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, here used to fill the egg halves; printaniere mayonnaise (No. 612) is a mayonnaise flavoured with green herbs and spring vegetables. The instruction that it be 'well-seasoned' is worth heeding, since a cold sauce takes salt and acid more heavily than a warm one.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York at the height of the American gilded age, and its chapter of cold garnishings is essentially a catalogue of buffet architecture — glazed fish and fowl raised on carved socles, coated in aspic, and decorated with truffle in patterns as formal as marquetry. The name a la Regence is generally traced to the French Regency of Philippe d'Orleans (1715-1723), a period nineteenth-century cooks invoked as shorthand for lavishness; by Ranhofer's day it had settled as a garnish name attached to particularly rich or elaborately dressed preparations rather than to any single historical dish. The near-identical entries on either side of this one — Salmon a la Moderne, Salmon a la Seymour — show how such recipes worked in practice: one poached salmon, one method of coating, and a dozen names distinguished chiefly by what went around the base.