Home › The World's Kitchen › Salmon, Demidoff
Salmon, Demidoff
Procure three slices fresh salmon one inch thick; place them in a saucepan with one gill white wine, one gill fish broth or water; half ounce good butter, one teaspoon salt and a saltspoon white pepper. Cover the fish with a buttered paper; place the saucepan on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil place the pan in a hot oven and bake for ten minutes. Remove from the oven; lift the pieces of fish from the pan with a skimmer, place on a hot dish and keep warm.
Place the pan with the gravy on the fire and let reduce to one-quarter, which will take about five minutes; then strain through a cheesecloth into another saucepan, adding three egg yolks; sharply mix with a whisk for three minutes on the corner of the range. Drop in, little by little, two tablespoons very hot melted butter, continually stirring without allowing it to boil. Then pour the sauce over the salmon. Place six very thin slices of truffles on top of the salmon and serve.
A poached salmon with a reduction-and-yolk sauce built in the pan — closer to a warm sabayon than a hollandaise, since the fish liquor carries the flavour. The whole dish is about twenty minutes' work, and nearly all the risk sits in the last three of them.
- Keep the sauce below a simmerThe yolks are thickening in a reduced, acidic liquid with no starch to protect them. Hold the pan at 160–175°F, off the heat as often as on it, whisking constantly; above about 185°F the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks. "The corner of the range" means the coolest part of a wood or coal stove — a low burner or a bowl over barely steaming water gives the same effect.
- GillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a cup of white wine and half a cup of fish stock, which is ample braising liquid for three slices in a snug pan.
- Hot ovenPeriod usage puts a "hot oven" at roughly 400-450F; the book itself gives no temperature. The pan goes in already at a boil, so ten minutes is enough for inch-thick slices. Note that 145F at the thickest point is the modern safe figure for fish; lower pull temperatures leave the centre translucent but undercooked.
- Fish brothA light fumet from salmon or white-fish bones simmered twenty minutes with aromatics. Bottled clam juice diluted by half is a workable stand-in; a heavy commercial fish stock will dominate the sauce once reduced by three-quarters.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered side down on the fish. It keeps the surface moist and stops the exposed top drying in a fierce oven. Foil traps more steam and gives less control.
- Half ounce butterOne tablespoon in the braising liquid, plus two tablespoons hot melted butter whisked in at the end. The final butter must be hot but not sizzling, and added in a thin thread, or it will not emulsify into the yolks.
- TrufflesSix paper-thin slices of black truffle were a garnish of status as much as flavour. Fresh winter truffle is the intended article; preserved truffle peelings give the aroma at a fraction of the price. Omitting them costs the dish nothing structurally.
- Yield and serviceThree slices, three servings. The sauce will not hold or reheat, so have the salmon plated and warm before the yolks go in, and serve immediately — steamed potatoes or plain rice absorb what runs off.
Dishes labelled Demidoff — most famously poularde Demidoff, with its fan of turned vegetables and truffle — take their name from the Demidov family, Russian industrialists who spent much of the nineteenth century in Paris and Florence and kept French chefs on a scale that got their name attached to the menu. Anatole Demidov, Prince of San Donato, is the member usually credited, though as with most such garnitures the attribution is traditional rather than documented, and by the time this book was compiled "Demidoff" had loosened into little more than a signal that truffles were involved. The sauce here is the older French kitchen's everyday answer to a rich fish dish: rather than making hollandaise separately, the cook reduces the poaching liquor to a quarter, binds it with yolks and mounts it with butter, so nothing of the salmon's flavour is thrown away. The International Cook Book drew heavily on this restaurant repertoire, translating hotel practice for households that had a range with a cool corner and, in principle, access to truffles.