No. 693

Mussels Bordelaise Garnishing

Garniture de Moules a la Bordelaise

Poached mussels are frequently used with other garnishings but they can also be served alone around small fish.

For Mussels Bordelaise.—Procure five dozen mussels, clean them well, washing them in several waters and then cook them with some mignonette, parsley, and sliced onions, but no salt, adding a little water. Set them on a slow fire, and when the mussels are opened, take them out of their shells, remove the black appendage, drain, and roll them in a Bordelaise sauce with marrow (No. 436); do not let them come to a boil, and use them for a garnishing.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A garnish rather than a dish: five dozen mussels steamed open, shucked, and warmed in a marrow-enriched Bordelaise. Two things carry it — the mussels must not be salted in the pot, and the finished sauce must never boil.

Do not let it boilOnce the shucked mussels go into the Bordelaise, keep the pan below a simmer. Marrow-bound sauces break and the mussels tighten into rubber within a minute of boiling. Warm through and serve.
MignonetteIn Ranhofer's usage this means coarsely cracked peppercorns, usually white, not the modern vinegar-shallot sauce served with raw oysters. Roughly a rounded teaspoon, cracked under a pan, suits five dozen mussels.
No salt is deliberateMussels release a great deal of salty liquor as they open, and the Bordelaise is seasoned already. Salting the cooking water risks a finished garnish too salty to eat.
"A little water"Only a shallow depth in a wide pot, so the mussels steam rather than boil. The recipe simply drains them; the strained liquor can be kept for other use.
TimingCovered over a brisk heat, mussels open in three to five minutes. "A slow fire" may reflect the heavy copper and coal ranges of the period; on a modern burner, moderate heat and a lid do the same work. Pull them as they open rather than cooking the whole pot to the last laggard.
SortingDiscard any mussel that will not close when tapped raw, and any that stays shut after cooking. Modern rope-grown mussels need scrubbing but little purging.
The black appendageThe beard, or byssus — the fibrous tuft the mussel anchors itself with. It pulls away easily after cooking. Some read the phrase as the dark rim of the mantle, but the beard is what is meant.
Sauce No. 436Bordelaise in The Epicurean is a red-wine and shallot reduction bound with espagnole; the recipe calls for it "with marrow", i.e. poached beef marrow cut in dice added to the sauce. Marrow bones are usually soaked or briefly poached before the marrow will come out whole.
YieldFive dozen mussels shuck down to roughly two cups of meat — enough to ring six to eight plated fish. Halve it freely; the method does not change.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, which is why an entry like this reads as a component rather than a meal: the garnishings section exists so that a cook could be told "turbot, moules à la bordelaise" and know exactly what to build. The Bordelaise pairing points to the French tradition of red wine with shellfish rather than the white-wine treatment of moules marinière, and the diced beef marrow is the marker of the Bordeaux style as nineteenth-century kitchens understood it. Mussels were cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast in Ranhofer's day; used as a garnish around a fine fish, they contributed flavor and body to the dish.