A guide to modern cookery

Combine one and one-half oz. of crayfish cream-cullis with each pound of the salmon mousseline forcemeat. Mould and poach as above, drain, and arrange in a circle on a dish. Garnish each mousseline with a thin slice of milt cooked in lightly-browned butter, four crayfish tails cut lengthwise into two, and a slice of truffle at each end. Coat with a light Mornay sauce, finished with crayfish butter, and glaze quickly. N.B.—In addition to these two recipes, all the garnishes suitable for fillets of sole may be applied to mousselines. Garnishes of early-season vegetable purées also suit them admirably, and therein lies an almost inexhaustible source of variety. 800—COLD SALMON When salmon is to be served cold it should, as far as possible, be cooked, either whole or in large pieces, in the courtbouillon given under No. 163 and cooled in the latter. Pieces cooked separately may seem better or may be more easily made to look sightly, but their meat is drier than that of the salmon cooked whole. And what is lost in appearance with the very large pieces is more than compensated for by their extra quality. In dishing cold salmon the skin may be removed and the fillets bared, so that the fish may be more easily decorated, but the real gourmet will always prefer the salmon served in its natural silver vestment. In decorating cold salmon use pieces of cucumber, anchovy fillets, capers, slices of tomato, curled-leaf parsley, &c. I am not partial to the decorating of salmon with softened butter, coloured or not, laid on by means of the piping-bag. Apart from the fact that this method of decoration is rarely artistic, the butter used combines badly with the cold sauces and the meat of the salmon on the diner’s plate. Very green tarragon leaves, chervil, lobster coral, &c., afford a more natural and more delicate means of ornamentation. The only butter fit to be served with cold salmon is Montpellier butter (No. 153), though this, in fact, is but a cold sauce often resorted to for the coating of the cold fish in question. Among the garnishes which suit cold salmon, I might mention small peeled, and einptied tomatoes garnished with some kind of salad; hard-boiled eggs, either wholly stuffed, or stuffed in halves or in quarters, barquettes, tartlets and cassolettes made from cucumber or beetroot, parboiled until almost completely cooked and garnished with a purée of tunny, of sardines, of anchovies, &c.; small aspics of shrimps or of crayfishes' tails; small slices of lobster, &c. Almost all the cold sauces may accompany cold salmon.. A LA ROYALE Having drained and dried the salmon or the darne, remove the skin from one of its sides, and coat the bared fillets with a layer of a preparation of mousse de saumon, letting it lie rather more thickly over the middle than the sides. Coat the layer of mousse with mayonnaise sauce thickened by means of fish jelly, and leave to set. Now let some clear fish jelly set on the bottom of the dish to be sent to the table; place the salmon or the darne on this jelly, and surround the piece with a border consisting of Montpellier butter, using for the purpose a piping-bag fitted with a grooved pipe. Decorate the centre of the piece by means of a fine fleur-delys made from truffles, and encircle it with two royale crowns made from anchovy fillets. A LA PARISIENNE Remove the skin in suchwise as to leave the bared portion in the shape of a regular rectangle, equidistant from the tail and the head; or, in the case of a darne, occupying two-thirds of its surface. Cover the bared portion with mayonnaise sauce thickened with fish jelly and leave it to set.