No. 2585

Salmon, a la Courbet

Saumon a la Courbet

Have the salmon already prepared and cooked the same as the Destaing (No. 2580); cover it with softened and smooth crawfish butter (No. 573) and decorate through a cornet; dredge the whole surface lightly with lobster coral chopped exceedingly fine and sifted through a sieve. Lay the fish on a socle and garnish around with lobster escalops covered with jellied mayonnaise (No. 613) and strew the surface with finely chopped truffles; between the escalops place clusters of fine large shrimp tails covered with jelly, and between each moscovite egg garnishing (No. 2511). Insert in the fish three hatelets composed of crawfish and decorated quenelles. Serve a mayonnaise cardinal sauce (No. 608) at the same time.

← No. 2584 Salmon a la Seymour Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2586 Salmon, Russian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly and presentation entry rather than a cooking recipe: the salmon itself is poached elsewhere in the book (No. 2580, Destaing), chilled, and then dressed. Nearly every element is a cross-reference, so the work is in the sub-preparations.

What you actually cookThe fish is cooked as directed for No. 2580 (Destaing) and served cold; this entry assumes that work is already done. Everything after it is decoration.
Crawfish butter (No. 573)Shells and trimmings of cooked crawfish pounded with butter, warmed to draw out the color, then strained through a fine sieve into ice water and worked smooth. Modern equivalent: blitz shells with soft butter in a processor, melt gently, strain, chill. It must be spreadable but not oily when applied.
CornetA cone of parchment or waxed paper, cut at the tip and used as a piping bag. Ranhofer assumes the cook can pipe a repeating pattern freehand; a small plain or star tip in a disposable bag does the same job.
Lobster coralThe roe of a hen lobster, black-green when raw and scarlet only after cooking. It must be poached or baked until firm, dried, then pushed through a fine sieve. Raw coral will neither color nor keep. Hen lobsters with roe are not reliably available; some fishmongers will sell coral separately on request.
SocleA decorative plinth, in this period usually of rice paste, hardened tallow, or shaped bread, sometimes wax for pure display. It is a stand, not food. A chilled mirrored platter or a shallow rice-paste base achieves the same lift without anything inedible on the table.
Escalops and hateletsEscalops are neat thin transverse slices of cooked lobster tail. Hatelets (attelets) are ornamental silver skewers, threaded here with crawfish and molded quenelles and stuck upright in the fish. They are ornaments, withdrawn before service.
Jellied mayonnaise and mayonnaise cardinalJellied mayonnaise is mayonnaise slackened with melted aspic and used at the point of setting, so it coats and holds. Cardinal sauce here is a mayonnaise carrying the color and flavor of lobster; see No. 608 for Ranhofer's own formula. Both must be applied to thoroughly cold food or they will slide.
Holding temperatureAssemble on a chilled platter, keep the finished dish refrigerated until the moment it goes out, and do not let it stand out more than two hours.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this run of cold salmon entries shows the grande cuisine buffet at its most elaborate: one poached fish, a dozen cross-referenced sub-preparations, and a named variation for every patron worth flattering. Dishes in this style were customarily named for a person or an occasion, and Courbet has sometimes been taken to honor Admiral Am e9d e9e Courbet, the French naval commander whose Tonkin campaigns filled American papers in the mid-1880s, though the name could equally belong to any number of other bearers, and Ranhofer, as usual, gives no explanation. The construction itself, cold fish masked in a compound shellfish butter, decorated through a cornet, raised on a socle and pierced with silver hatelets, belongs to the Car e8me tradition of the pi e8ce mont e9e, where a cold table was judged as much on architecture as on flavor. The hatelets and socles disappeared from restaurant practice within a generation, which is why the vocabulary of this entry now reads as more foreign than its ingredients.