No. 890

Pike Croquettes a la Romaine

Croquettes de Brochet a la Romaine

Cut into three-sixteenth inch squares, half a pound of mushrooms, and one pound of pike fillets, sauted in butter, and cut into the same size pieces as the mushrooms, also two ounces of truffles, and mix these together with an espagnole (No. 414) reduced with Marsala wine. Have some cream cake paste (No. 132); put it with an equal amount of pike quenelle forcemeat (No. 90); butter some timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), cover the bottoms and sides with a thin layer of this forcemeat, and garnish the centers with a salpicon; cover over with more forcemeat, and poach them in a very slow oven for twenty minutes, then unmold, dip them in eggs, roll in bread-crumbs and fry till a good color; drain, dress on folded napkins, and garnish with fried parsley.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a two-stage dish: a bound salpicon sealed inside a fish mousseline, poached in timbale molds, then breaded and fried. Ranhofer assumes you have his espagnole, choux paste and quenelle forcemeat already made, so most of the work happens before this page begins.

Chill before fryingPoached, unmolded timbales are best refrigerated until firm and cold through before egging and crumbing, or the forcemeat may swell and split in the fat. Ranhofer does not mention the step.
"A very slow oven"No figure is given; a very slow oven is conventionally read as something in the region of 250-275F. Poaching of this kind is normally done with the buttered molds set in a shallow pan of hot water held just below a simmer, and twenty minutes suits small molds. The forcemeat should feel set and spring back, not browned.
Frying temperature350-375F is right for something already cooked through. The aim is colour and a crisp crust in two to three minutes, not further cooking.
Cream cake pasteNo. 132 is choux paste - flour, water, butter, eggs. Mixed half and half with the fish quenelle forcemeat it acts as a panada, lightening the mousseline and giving it enough body to hold a shape when fried.
Espagnole and MarsalaNo. 414 is the old brown mother sauce, built on brown roux and veal stock over several hours. A good reduced demi-glace or a well-reduced brown veal stock does the same job; reduce it with the Marsala until it is thick enough to coat the diced garnish and hold it together when cold.
The salpiconThree-sixteenths of an inch is a scant 5 mm dice. Keep the mushrooms, pike and truffle all cut to the same size - that uniformity is what a salpicon means, and it matters for how the filling slices.
TrufflesTwo ounces of fresh black truffle is now a luxury out of proportion to the rest of the dish. Chopped preserved truffle, or truffle peelings with a little of their juice added to the sauce, gives the intended perfume.
The pikePike is fine-flavoured but full of Y-bones; buy it filleted and run your fingers through it before dicing. Walleye, pickerel or another firm freshwater white fish substitutes without complaint, and pollock or haddock will do for the forcemeat.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no yield; a pound of fish, half a pound of mushrooms and two ounces of truffles make a large quantity of salpicon, so scale to the molds you have and reckon two timbales per person as a hot entree. Fried parsley means whole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into the same fat for a few seconds; the folded napkin is there to absorb fat and can be a rack and a plate.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for over thirty years, and its structure explains why this recipe reads like a set of cross-references: the book is a working system, and No. 890 simply assembles components made elsewhere in it. Pike was a serious restaurant fish in the nineteenth century, valued in both French and American cooking for flesh that pounds into an exceptionally fine quenelle forcemeat, which is why so many classic mousseline preparations name it specifically. The Romaine label in Ranhofer, as in much nineteenth-century restaurant French, is often read as a menu-writer's flourish rather than a claim of Roman origin, though how strictly such garnish names were applied is uncertain. The croquette itself belongs to the era's habit of turning cooked, sauce-bound trimmings into something shapely and fried - a technique that ended up on the most expensive menus in the city.