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Salmon, Venitienne
Procure three three-quarter-pound slices fine salmon, place in a sautoir with an ounce butter, half gill white wine, gill water, teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper and the juice of a quarter lemon. Cover fish with a buttered paper, boil for five minutes, then set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, lay slices on cloth to drain, then place on a hot dish, pour Hollandaise-Venitienne sauce over the fish and serve.
A plain poach-then-bake of thick salmon steaks, finished with a green herb hollandaise. The measurements are Delmonico's kitchen shorthand and the cooking time belongs to an era that liked fish well done.
- The timing is the problemFive minutes at a boil plus twenty-five in the oven will take twelve-ounce salmon slices well past moist by modern taste. A cook following this today would want to check the fish considerably earlier, since in a covered pan with this little liquid it cooks faster than the stated times suggest.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of wine is 4 tablespoons and a gill of water is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making three saltspoons a scant 3/4 teaspoon of pepper — assertive but not a misprint.
- SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a sloped sauté pan. Any wide skillet or saucier that holds the three slices in one layer with the liquid coming a third of the way up will do.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche: parchment cut to the diameter of the pan, buttered on the side facing the fish, laid directly on it. It keeps the exposed top moist and stops a skin forming. A pan lid is not the same thing and traps more steam.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading of the intent; with the pan covered and this little liquid the fish is essentially finishing in its own steam rather than roasting.
- Hollandaise-VenitienneNot given here; look for it elsewhere in the book. Failing that, hollandaise finished with a reduction of tarragon vinegar and shallot and a puree of blanched tarragon, chervil and parsley for colour is a defensible reconstruction. Hold it warm rather than hot -- overheating will curdle the yolks.
- DrainingThe step of resting the slices on a cloth matters more than it looks. Poaching liquid clinging to the fish will thin the sauce and slide it off the plate.
- YieldThree slices of 12 oz each is a little over two pounds of fish, enough for four to six servings once divided.
Sauce vénitienne belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire of green sauces for fish: a sharp reduction of tarragon vinegar and shallot, a white wine or hollandaise base, and enough pounded tarragon, chervil and parsley to tint it. Why it is called Venetian is not documented, and the connection to Venice appears to be nominal rather than culinary — the same era produced sauces named genevoise, hollandaise and portugaise with equally loose geography. The method here — shallow liquid, buttered paper, brief boil, then the oven — is one way of handling a thick fish steak.