No. 637

Admiral Garnishing

Garniture a l'Amiral

Take eight mussels a la Villeroi (No. 698), sixteen fluted mushrooms (No. 118), half a pound of skinned and sauted shrimps; eight trussed crawfish, the tail shell removed. Parsley leaves to be arranged in bunches at both ends. Serve with Normande sauce (No. 509). For an entree mix the mushrooms and shrimps with the sauce, add chopped parsley and oranges around the Villeroi mussels and crawfish.

← No. 636 Ziska Sauce, Parisian Sauce for All Foods Garnishings No. 638 A la Reine Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a composed garnish from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system rather than a standalone dish: it assumes you can build four separate preparations and assemble them around a poached fish. Read it as a parts list with an assembly note at the end.

What the numbers meanEvery reference (No. 698, No. 118, No. 509) points to another entry in The Epicurean. Nothing here can be executed without those three sub-recipes, so treat this page as the diagram and go find the components.
Mussels à la VilleroiVilleroi is the technique that carries the whole garnish: poached mussels are coated in a thick reduced sauce, chilled solid, then breadcrumbed and deep fried. The chilling is the hinge. Warm coating slides off in the fryer and the crumb crust bursts. Fry at 350-375F only until the crust colours, about a minute.
Fluted mushroomsRanhofer's No. 118 is the turned or channelled cap, cut in spiral grooves with the tip of a small knife. Use firm, tight white buttons of even size; anything open or brown-gilled will not hold the cuts and will bleed grey into the sauce.
Shrimps"Skinned" means peeled. Ranhofer does not say whether the half pound is weighed before or after peeling; read as peeled weight, it implies roughly a pound in the shell. Saute briefly, until just opaque; the residual heat of the Normande sauce will finish them.
Trussed crawfishTrussed here means the cooked crawfish is fixed with a small skewer or pinned so the tail curls under, the classic upright presentation. Removing the tail shell while leaving the head and claws intact lets a guest eat the meat without dismantling the garnish.
Normande sauceA fish veloute finished with mushroom liquor and shellfish cooking liquor (classically oyster), cream and egg yolks; No. 509 has Ranhofer's own proportions. Once the yolks go in it must not boil or it will curdle; hold it below about 180F and mount it off the heat.
The orangesOranges appear only in the entree variation, where a modern kitchen would more likely reach for lemon. Peeled segments with all pith and membrane removed, placed at the last moment; whole slices left sitting will weep juice into the sauce.
Yield and assemblyEight mussels and eight crawfish suggest a garnish sized for one large platter; Ranhofer does not name the fish or the number of covers. The Normande sauce points to fish service, with the parsley bunched at either end of the dish. The entree variation folds the mushrooms and shrimps into the sauce and sets chopped parsley and oranges around the Villeroi mussels and crawfish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is the codified record of that operation: hundreds of numbered garnishes, sauces and forcemeats meant to be recombined by cooks who already knew the grammar. Garnitures were named rather than described, so a chef could call "a l'amiral" down the line and get shellfish, in the same way "a la reine" on the next page meant chicken. The admiral's name attached itself to seafood garnishes in French classical cookery of this period and is generally read as a straightforward naval allusion; the fried mussels, crawfish and shrimps arranged around a whole fish were meant to read as a maritime tableau on the platter. The style belongs to the great age of service a la russe in American restaurants, which is precisely why so much labour went into components no one would notice for more than a minute.