No. 844

Bondons of Pickerel a la Walton

Bondons de Brochet a la Walton

Butter some cylindrical molds the shape of a cask bung, one and three-quarter inches high, one and three-eighths inches wide at the bottom, and one and five-eighths inches at the top or opening. Prepare a pike quenelle forcemeat as follows: Half a pound of pickerel, six ounces of butter, four egg-yolks, a quarter of a pound of cream cake paste (No. 132), salt, pepper, nutmeg, and two egg-whites beaten to a stiff froth. Fill the molds with this forcemeat, and finish as explained in No. 884. Serve separately a salpicon made of oysters or mussels, and crawfish or lobster, cut in dice, and some mushrooms; mix with as much Hollandaise sauce (No. 477) as bechamel (No. 409).

← No. 843 Bateaux of Fat Livers, Russian Style Hot Side Dishes No. 845 Bondons of Woodcock a la Diane →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already knows how to make a quenelle forcemeat and has the numbered cross-references to hand. The hinge here is temperature: the forcemeat must be worked cold and poached below a simmer, or it curdles and weeps butter.

The moldsA bondon mold is roughly 1 3/4 inches tall and about 1 1/2 inches across — the size and taper of a cask bung. Small dariole molds, timbale molds or 2 oz metal ramekins are the closest modern equivalent. Butter them heavily and chill them before filling.
PickerelIn nineteenth-century American usage the name was applied loosely to pike and its smaller relatives (and in some regions to walleye), and Ranhofer's French title says brochet outright. Pike, walleye or any firm, low-fat white fish (whiting, cod, haddock) will bind properly; oily fish will not.
Cream cake pasteNo. 132 is choux paste — flour, water, butter and eggs cooked to a dough. It is functioning as the panada that gives the quenelle its body. Make it and cool it completely before it goes near the fish.
Working the forcemeatForcemeats of this kind were worked cold; a food processor does the job now: puree the fish alone first, add the cold choux paste, then the butter and yolks, then fold in the beaten whites by hand. Keep everything cold throughout or the butter breaks out. Poach a teaspoon of it in water to check seasoning and firmness before filling the molds.
Poaching, not bakingThe finishing is left to No. 884, which is not reproduced here; bondons of this type were poached rather than baked. Set the filled molds in a pan of water held at 170-180F — no bubbles — and cook 15 to 20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the forcemeat is just set. Boiling water inflates the quenelles and then collapses them.
The salpiconOysters and mussels want 30 seconds in their own liquor, no more; a quarter hour turns them to rubber. Cook the shellfish, dice it small, and warm it in the sauce off direct heat.
Half hollandaise, half bechamelEqual parts, mixed warm, is essentially a bound hollandaise that tolerates handling better than the pure sauce. Keep it under 150F and serve immediately — it cannot be reheated or held long without splitting.
YieldHalf a pound of fish with its panada and enrichments fills eight to ten bondons, which is a side dish for four, or two apiece as a first course.

A Little History

The name is a small piece of literary flattery: Izaak Walton, whose The Compleat Angler (1653) includes a well-known chapter on the dressing of a pike, was the patron figure of anglers throughout the nineteenth century, and a pike dish "a la Walton" would have read as an obvious compliment to a diner who fished. Bondon means a cask bung, and the word was already doing double duty in French kitchens as the name of a small cylindrical Normandy cheese — in both cases it describes the shape of the mold rather than anything about the contents. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for over thirty years, built The Epicurean (1894) as a cross-referenced system rather than a book of standalone recipes, which is why this one is largely a set of instructions for combining other entries: a forcemeat from one number, a paste from another, two sauces from two more. American "pickerel" was cheap and abundant, and turning a bony freshwater fish into a smooth molded quenelle was exactly the kind of transformation that justified a restaurant's prices.