Quenelles de Brochet Sauce Nantua: The Lyonnaise Dumpling Art
Lyon
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Origin
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Description
Quenelles de brochet (pike dumplings) in sauce Nantua (crayfish butter sauce) is the other pillar of Lyonnaise fine dining — Mère Brazier's eternal menu companion to poularde demi-deuil. Pike flesh is pounded to a paste (panade), enriched with eggs, butter, and cream, shaped into oval dumplings, and poached in stock. They are then napped in sauce Nantua — a béchamel enriched with crayfish butter (made by pounding crayfish shells with butter to extract the carotenoid-rich fat) and finished with cream. The result is impossibly light, ethereally smooth, and deeply flavoured.
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The Thread
—Gefilte fish in Jewish Ashkenazi tradition (fish forcemeat formed into dumplings and poached — the structural parallel is direct), Chinese fish balls (fish paste shaped and poached), Japanese hanpen (
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Flavour Context
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Pillars V — VII
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