Salmon, Venetian Style

This is an assembly job rather than a cooking one: the salmon is poached and chilled elsewhere in the book, and No. 2587 tells you how to dress it. Ranhofer's cross-references carry most of the work, so the useful thing is to know what each one is.

• The hinge: everything must stay coldA jellied mayonnaise coating only sets and holds its shape near refrigerator temperature, and a whole poached salmon left out to be decorated at leisure is exactly the condition in which cold fish spoils. Work in short stages with the fish going back into the cold between each, and chill each layer firm before adding the next.
• "The same as the Destaing"No. 2580 is the poached whole salmon this dish is built on; follow it for the cooking and cooling, and skin the side that will be presented. Nineteenth-century poaching times tend to leave salmon dry, and a dry fish under a jelly coat is unrescuable, so cook it just to done rather than by the clock.
• Ravigote butter and green mayonnaiseRavigote butter (No. 583) is butter pounded with blanched ravigote herbs -- typically chervil, tarragon, chives and watercress -- and pressed through a sieve. Much of the green in both the butter and the mayonnaise comes from the herbs themselves; blanch them thirty seconds and squeeze dry or the water will break the emulsion.
• Jellied mayonnaiseNo. 613 is mayonnaise stiffened with melted aspic or gelatin; the proportion varies with how firm a coat you want. Combine while the jelly is only just fluid and use it at the point where it coats a spoon thickly; too warm and it runs off the fish, too cool and it sets in the bowl.
• Paupiettes and hateletsPaupiettes of smelts are boned fillets rolled around a fish forcemeat and poached. Hatelets are ornamental skewers -- silver or plated -- threaded with shrimp and crawfish and stuck upright into the fish for height, serving display rather than service.
• SocleA socle is a shaped pedestal that raises the fish above the platter, in Ranhofer's day carved from rice paste, wax or a block of hard fat. A chilled, cloth-draped stand or a low inverted dish does the same job.
• Artichoke bottomsTrimmed artichoke hearts, cooked in a blanc (water with flour and lemon) to keep them pale. Good-quality jarred or frozen bottoms substitute directly; the canned ones are usually too soft to support a paupiette.
• Chopped jellyClear aspic, set firm, then chopped on a cold surface with a wet knife to a sparkling gravel. It scatters around the base and must be added at the last moment, since it slumps and weeps within an hour at room temperature.
• YieldThis sits among the cold buffet dishes, where a dressed salmon would be one item among several rather than a plated portion. Ranhofer gives no yield; on that basis a fish of six to eight pounds would stretch to twenty-odd servings.