No. 822

Smoked Beef, Salmon, Sturgeon, Goose Breast, or Tongue

Boeuf Fume, Saumon, Esturgeon, Poitrine d'oie et Langue.

Cut the beef into very thin slices, and serve with sprigs of parsley around.

Smoked Salmon or Sturgeon.—Cut thin slices of smoked salmon or smoked sturgeon three-sixteenths of an inch thick; broil them on a gridiron for one minute on each side, and when they are cold, arrange them on a side dish, pour a little sweet oil over, and serve with chopped parsley and slices of lemon around, or to be served raw cut in thin slices, and dressed either in a circle or straight row with chopped parsley around.

Smoked Breast of Goose.—Cut the meat off the breasts lengthwise into very thin slices; range in straight rows with parsley around the dish.

Red Beef Tongue.—Cut the tongue in thin equal sized slices, suppressing the fibrous parts and fat; range them in a circle in the center of a small side dish, one on top of the other; garnish around with parsley and chopped jelly in the center.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly and slicing job rather than cooking: Ranhofer assumes you have bought the smoked or cured item and are presenting it as one of several small cold dishes. The only real technique is the one-minute sear on the salmon or sturgeon.

Three-sixteenths of an inchThat is about 5 mm — noticeably thicker than the tissue-thin slices sold as smoked salmon today. The thickness is what allows the slice to take a minute on the gridiron without falling apart; if you are using standard cold-smoked salmon from a packet, skip the broiling and serve it raw as the recipe's alternative allows.
Broil, then cool completelyThe point of the sear is a light scorch of flavour, not cooking through, and the slices are meant to be eaten cold. Serve them warm and the oil dressing turns greasy rather than glossy.
Sweet oilNineteenth-century English for a mild, fresh olive oil — "sweet" meaning not rancid. A good fruity olive oil is the modern equivalent; a strongly peppery one will bully the fish.
Smoked breast of gooseSold in Germany as Spickgans and available from specialist butchers and mail order; it is cured and smoked, ready to eat, and slices like prosciutto. Smoked duck breast (French magret fumé) is the easiest substitute and behaves the same way. Slice lengthwise along the breast — the aim is long thin slices that lie flat.
Red beef tongueNot fresh tongue but brine-cured tongue, pink from the curing salts, and cooked — sold as pickled or corned tongue where it survives at all. Buy it ready-cured; the recipe gives no cure quantities and is not asking you to make one.
Chopped jellyChopped aspic — a clear meat jelly set firm, then diced or chopped so it glitters. Ranhofer would have had a stockpot's worth on hand; a good clarified beef consommé set with gelatine gives the same effect, and it must be cold and firm before chopping.
SturgeonWild sturgeon is protected and its trade restricted; smoked sturgeon on the market today is almost always farmed. It is legal and good, but it is likely to be a different, milder species from what a Delmonico's cook was handling.
Yield and serviceEach of these is a side dish in the older sense — a small plate passed among several as part of a larger meal, figure two or three thin slices a person. Cut and arrange no more than an hour ahead and keep it covered and cold; thin slices of smoked fish dry and dull quickly in open air.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his long career as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the American restaurant of the period handled what the French called hors-d'œuvre froids: a row of small cold plates set out before or alongside the main service, each requiring almost no cooking but exact knife work. The four items grouped here are all products of the smokehouse or the brine tub, the preserved-meat counter of a city with large German and Central European populations — smoked goose breast in particular is a northern German and Pomeranian speciality, generally sold under the name Spickgans. Red beef tongue, pink from saltpetre in the cure, was a standard cold-buffet item on both sides of the Atlantic. That Ranhofer offers the smoked salmon either seared or raw is worth noticing: raw cured fish as a first course was unremarkable in 1894, whatever later fashion made of it.