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Troncon of Salmon, Mousseline
Procure a three-pound piece fresh salmon, place it in an earthen basin, add one sliced white onion, three chopped parsley roots, half a sound sliced lemon, two cloves, one crushed bay leaf, a half teaspoon ground thyme, one teaspoon whole black pepper, a teaspoon allspice, one gill vinegar, one tablespoon salt, one quart cold water, and let fish marinade for six hours if possible. Remove, drain and place in a saucepan, with a sliced carrot, one sliced onion, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one gill vinegar, half gill white wine, a tablespoon salt, and pour in enough water to cover fish. Cover pan, place on fire and let slowly come to boiling point, then simmer two minutes. Remove pan to a table and let stand five minutes. Carefully lift up salmon with a skimmer, dress on a large hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate both sides with well-cleaned parsley greens, and serve with a mousseline sauce separately.
A classic French court-bouillon poach, written for a cook who already knew what a troncon and a mousseline were. The heat is the part that needs attention.
- TronconA troncon is a crosswise section cut through a large fish on the bone, skin on; here a three-pound block. Ask for a centre-cut piece from a whole salmon rather than fillets, which will fall apart in this treatment.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. The recipe uses one gill of vinegar in the marinade and another in the poaching liquid, plus half a gill (1/4 cup) of white wine.
- Parsley rootsHamburg parsley, a pale root grown for the taproot rather than the leaf. Still sold at Eastern European and farmers' markets; a small parsnip plus a handful of parsley stems gives a close approximation.
- The two-minute simmerThe timing assumes the fish heats through during the slow rise to the boil, where much of the cooking happens. Bring it up genuinely slowly and check the thickest part against the bone; many cooks pull salmon at 125-130F for moistness, though standard food-safety guidance for fish is 145F. A cold-started 3 lb block may need several minutes more at a bare tremble than the two stated.
- Six hours in vinegarThe long acid soak firms and lightly cures the surface and pushes the flavour sharp; it may reflect older habits around fish of uncertain freshness, though the recipe does not say so. With good salmon, two hours is plenty, and the marinade can be skipped entirely without harming the dish.
- Mousseline sauceHollandaise lightened with softly whipped cream folded in just before service, roughly a quarter to a third cream by volume. It must be made at the last minute and served warm, not hot, or it will break.
- The folded napkinNot decoration alone. The cloth absorbs the poaching liquid that continues to drain from the fish so the platter does not flood. A clean linen napkin, folded in thirds on a warmed dish, still does the job.
- YieldThree pounds on the bone serves six generously as a main course, or eight as part of a longer menu.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) reflects the classical French repertoire that restaurant put on American tables. Poaching a whole section of salmon in an aromatic court bouillon and serving it on a large hot dish, garnish flanking it, sauce in a separate boat, is straight from that tradition. Mousseline sauce is generally said to take its name from muslin, the fine light cloth, a standard French shorthand for anything lightened with whipped cream. Parsley root and chervil in the poaching liquid point to continental habits: both were common in European kitchens of the period and largely disappeared from ordinary US groceries in the century that followed.