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Salmon, Boitel
Procure three three-quarter-pound slices very fresh salmon, place in a frying pan with a half ounce butter, half gill white wine, gill water, the juice of a quarter of lemon, two branches parsley, half teaspoon each salt and pepper. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper, boil for five minutes, then set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, dress the fish on a hot dish, one overlapping another, remove the spine bones and keep warm. Heat in a small saucepan one tablespoon butter, add two tablespoons flour, stir well, then pour the fish gravy into this with a half gill cream; mix well until it comes to a boil, then add a half teaspoon freshly chopped chervil and six sliced canned mushrooms. Mix well, cook for five minutes, pour the sauce over the fish and serve.
A braised salmon in the French manner: the fish poaches in its own buttered liquor, which then becomes the sauce. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the fish, and the original timing is generous by modern standards.
- Gills and half gillsA gill is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is 1/4 cup. The braising liquid is thus 1/4 cup white wine and 1/2 cup water; the sauce takes 1/4 cup cream.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given at all; the recipe simply says to set the pan in the oven. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading, but the figure is ours and not the book's.
- Cut the cooking timeFive minutes on the stove plus twenty in the oven will take three-quarter-pound salmon steaks well past dry. Modern practice is to pull salmon at 125-130F at the thickest point, which for steaks this size means roughly 8-12 minutes in the oven after the liquid comes up to a simmer.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of parchment, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish so it steams rather than dries. Parchment does the job; foil seals more tightly and traps more steam.
- Balance the rouxOne tablespoon butter to two tablespoons flour is fat-short and will go grainy. Use equal volumes, cook the roux a minute without colouring, then whisk in the strained fish liquor and the cream.
- PepperHalf a teaspoon of pepper on three steaks is assertive by current taste, and white pepper is the conventional choice for a pale cream sauce.
- Mushrooms and chervilCanned mushrooms were a common year-round article in kitchens of this period; a few sliced button mushrooms sweated in butter give more flavour and no tinny note. Fresh chervil is worth seeking out for its light anise character, but a mix of parsley and a little tarragon stands in.
- YieldThree thick steaks serve three generously, or four if the fish is filleted off the bone and portioned before saucing.
Dishes labelled à la Boitel belong to the late nineteenth-century French restaurant repertoire, where a garnish name functioned as shorthand a cook could read at a glance: here, mushrooms, lemon and a butter-enriched sauce built from the fish's own cooking liquor. The name is generally taken to honour a person, though the identity behind it is not securely documented. The method itself is classic braisage of fish: a shallow pan, a small quantity of wine and water, a buttered paper in place of a lid, and the resulting liquor thickened into the sauce so nothing is wasted. The six sliced canned mushrooms are a reminder that the tin, not the market, supplied a great deal of what those kitchens called garnish.