No. 684

Matelote Garnishings

Garnitures Matelote

These garnishings are composed of roe, milt, crawfish tails, small glazed onions, whole mushrooms, and even truffles; they are to be dressed either in clusters or mixed together; if the latter be desired, then cover them with a matelote sauce (No. 498), and if the former, arrange them in distinct groups, and serve the sauce separately.

← No. 683 Marrow Fritters with Truffles Garnishing Garnishings No. 685 Matelote Bourguignotte Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a component entry rather than a standalone dish: a set of garnishes for a matelote, the red-wine fish stew that runs through nineteenth-century French service. Ranhofer gives no quantities because the garnish is scaled to the platter it dresses.

The hinge: cook each element separatelyRoe, milt, crawfish tails, onions and mushrooms all have different cooking times and none of them survives being stewed together. Poach, glaze and sauté, then combine them for saucing or grouping at the moment of service.
Milt and roe"Roe" here is the hard roe (eggs) and "milt" the soft roe, the male sperm sac, sold today as soft roe or laitance and most easily found from herring. Both want a bare poach in salted, acidulated court bouillon for two to four minutes until just set; a hard boil makes roe grainy and bursts the milt.
Matelote sauce (No. 498)A red-wine fish sauce, cross-referenced but not reproduced on this page; broadly a fish stock reduced with red wine and aromatics, thickened and finished with butter. If you are not working through Ranhofer's cross-references, any reduced red-wine fish sauce serves the purpose.
Crawfish tailsBoil the crawfish whole in seasoned water for three to five minutes, then shell. The heads and shells can be kept for a shellfish butter rather than discarded.
Glazed onionsSmall onions or peeled pearl onions cooked in butter, a little sugar and just enough stock to evaporate to a shine. Twenty to twenty-five minutes over low heat; they should be tender through, not merely browned.
Whole mushroomsPeriod recipes mean small, tightly closed white button mushrooms, turned or left whole and cooked "blanc" in water with butter and lemon juice so they stay pale. Modern cremini will muddy the colour of the group.
TrufflesFresh black truffle at this scale is a luxury few will match; a good preserved truffle, thinly sliced, gives the visual note. Truffle oil does not, and will fight the red wine.
Choosing between the two presentationsMixed and sauced is the practical route for a dish going to the table in one piece. Arranged in distinct clusters with the sauce in a boat is the formal service, and it only works if each element is properly seasoned on its own, since the sauce is no longer carrying it.
QuantityFor a matelote serving six, figure roughly a dozen small onions, a dozen mushrooms, a dozen crawfish tails and two pairs of roe and milt — enough to ring the platter without crowding the fish.

A Little History

A matelote is a boatman's stew he word comes from matelot, sailor traditionally made of freshwater fish eel, carp, pike immered in red wine with onions and mushrooms. By the time Charles Ranhofer was running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and compiled The Epicurean (1894), the rustic dish had been fully absorbed into the grande cuisine repertoire, and its garnish had hardened into a fixed formula that a cook could be told to produce by name. That is what this entry is: not a dish but a specification, one of the numbered garnishes Ranhofer indexed so that a recipe elsewhere in the book could simply call for No. 684. The inclusion of roe and milt reflects a period habit of using the whole fish, soft roe in particular being prized as a delicacy in France and Britain well into the twentieth century before it fell largely out of English-language cooking.