No. 2588

Salmon, with Montpellier or Cambridge Butter

Saumon au Beurre de Montpellier ou au Beurre de Cambridge

The salmon must first be prepared and cooked the same as for the Destaing (No. 2580); cover it either with Montpellier butter (No. 582), or Cambridge butter (No. 570); decorate through a cornet and in the center form a medallion; lay here and there olives, capers and sliced pickled gherkins, and garnish around with trussed crawfish, lettuce hearts, water cress and hard eggs cut as barrels (No. 2507), also oysters covered with ravigote jelly. Serve a remoulade sauce (No. 624) separately.

← No. 2587 Salmon, Venetian Style Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2589 Sliced Sheepshead with Jelly →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly instruction rather than a stand-alone recipe: Ranhofer expects you to have four or five other numbered preparations already made and chilled. Read it as a plating diagram for a cold buffet salmon, and do all the component work the day before.

What No. 2580 meansThe cross-reference is to Ranhofer's Destaing salmon, which should be consulted directly; on the pattern of the other cold salmon entries it will be a whole fish or large center cut poached in court-bouillon, cooled, then drained, skinned and trimmed before coating. Ranhofer gives no temperatures at all; as modern guidance, poach at a bare shiver (around 160-170F) and pull the fish at 125-130F internal, allowing for carry-over as it cools.
Montpellier and Cambridge butterBoth are compound butters worked to a paste and used as a coating. Montpellier butter is blanched herbs (parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives, watercress), shallot, capers, gherkin, anchovy and hard-boiled yolk pounded with butter and a little oil; Cambridge butter is the English cousin, leaning harder on anchovy and hard yolk. Keep them cool and spreadable, not soft, or they will slump off the fish.
The hinge: temperatureEverything here depends on the salmon being thoroughly cold and dry before the butter goes on. A damp or faintly warm fish will make the coating weep and the piped decoration collapse within the hour. Chill the poached fish overnight, blot it, and work in the coolest part of the kitchen.
"Through a cornet"A cornet is a cone rolled from parchment or paper, used as a piping bag. Any small piping bag with a plain or star tip does the same job; the "medallion" is simply a piped roundel at the center of the fish, often filled with a contrasting element.
Trussed crawfishCrayfish were cooked with the tail curled and pinned or skewered against the body so they held a neat arched shape for garnish. Cooked whole crayfish are seasonal and regional; large head-on shrimp, cooked and left in the shell, stand in convincingly.
Eggs cut as barrelsNo. 2507 is the garnishings entry to check; the cut is understood to be hard-boiled eggs trimmed at both ends into short cylinders, so they sit upright like little casks. Slightly overcook the eggs by a minute so the yolks are firm enough to survive the trimming.
The oystersRanhofer does not say to cook them. Poach the oysters in their own liquor just until the edges ruffle, chill them, then coat with the herb-green ravigote jelly; raw oysters held at buffet temperature under a layer of aspic are a poor idea now.
Ravigote jelly and remouladeRavigote jelly is generally taken to be a clear fish or chicken aspic flavored and tinted green with herbs of the same sort used in the butter, though the book's own formula should be checked. The remoulade at No. 624 is the classic mayonnaise-based sauce with mustard, capers, gherkin and herbs, served cold in a separate boat.
Scale and serviceA whole dressed salmon on a platter in this style serves 12 to 20 as a cold course. Assemble no more than three or four hours ahead, keep it refrigerated until the last possible moment, and do not leave it standing out for more than two hours.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire in one volume, cross-referenced like an encyclopedia. Cold decorated fish belonged to the grand buffet, where a coated salmon was as much centerpiece as food, and the numbered garnishings in this section were meant to be mixed and matched. Montpellier butter is a well-established item in the nineteenth-century French repertoire, its brilliant green from blanched herbs prized because it held color under aspic; the "Cambridge" version is generally treated as the English analogue, anchovy-forward and closer in spirit to the potted fish pastes of British tables. That Ranhofer offers both in one line may hint at something about the clientele at Delmonico's — one might speculate that they expected French technique but not necessarily French seasoning.