Pike Quenelles in Tomato Sauce

Name: Pike Quenelles in Tomato Sauce: Classic French Fish Quenelles
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: French cuisine
Ingredients: Pike or zander fillet 500 g; White bread, roll 100 g (crumb only, no crust); Cream (10-15%) 200 ml (rich milk works for soaking); Salt, white pepper to taste; Water for poaching; Tomato juice 1 cup (200 ml); Cream (10-15%) 50 ml; Sugar 1 tsp (5 g); Salt, pepper, sweet paprika, ground coriander to taste; Herbs optional

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1 h

Many people surely remember the fish days they used to have in “factory” canteens. The most common dishes were fried hake or pollock, fish cutlets or, with luck, small oblong meatballs of ground fish, poached in water or stock and generously covered in tomato sauce. They were called fish quenelles, a widespread ground-fish dish made with added white bread, milk or cream.

What is special about this dish is that practically no binders are used in the mixture. What is more, the mixture is usually a little runny or extremely soft, and it is held together during cooking by the very fine grind and a certain “stickiness” of the flesh. Very often the mixture is pushed through a sieve and thinned further with milk or cream.

Fish quenelles turn out best with pike or zander. Similar recipes are often found in old cookbooks. The shape is usually balls or slightly elongated, egg-like ovals. To prepare the mixture, the ground fish flesh is pushed through a sieve and “whipped” with cream and soaked white bread. Sometimes eggs are added. Often meat or chicken is used instead of fish.

We are used to ground-meat products being fried or braised: cutlets, meatballs, rissoles. Quenelles are made a little differently. Pieces shaped from the loose mixture are poached in boiling water, less often in stock, and very rarely fried. A special oblong spoon is used to form the elongated pieces, and that determines the usual shape.

I read somewhere that the name most likely comes from Knepfle or Knoffle, which roughly means “little ball”, or from the German Knödel, a dumpling. In the old days, boneless pike flesh was pounded in a mortar to make it as uniform as possible, then pushed through a sieve and mixed with other additions. The sauce for quenelles could be anything. In Lyon, though, tomato is used more often, and it is very tasty.

Ingredients

4 servings

Pike or zander fillet 500 g
White bread, roll 100 g (crumb only, no crust)
Cream (10-15%) 200 ml (rich milk works for soaking)
Salt, white pepper to taste
Water for poaching

Tomato juice 1 cup (200 ml)
Cream (10-15%) 50 ml
Sugar 1 tsp (5 g)
Salt, pepper, sweet paprika, ground coriander to taste

Herbs optional

Step-by-step recipe

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How to make the fish mixture

For the mixture you need fillet of lean fish, best of all pike or zander. This fish has few bones, which are easy to remove while cleaning it and preparing the mixture. There is also little waste: skin, fins, bones. The mixture for quenelles can be made not from a whole fish but from a part of a large one.

Prepare the fish. If the fish was frozen, move it from the freezer to the fridge beforehand and do not rush the thawing, so less liquid is released.

Before you start cutting up the fish, soak the white bread in cream or rich milk. I used a French baguette and cut off the crust with a knife. You need only the crumb. Put the bread in a bowl and pour the cream over it, leaving about 50 ml for the sauce. The cream will not completely cover the bread, but it will soak in nicely.
Cut up the fish and grind the fillet into a mixture. With a knife remove the fins and backbone and pick out all the visible bones. Cut the fillet off the skin. If small bones are visible where the fins were, it is better to cut them out. Then grind the fillet through an ordinary meat grinder. A home meat grinder with a plate has one great property: the fish bones are not ground up but collect in front of the plate and are easily removed.
Grind the mixture with the bread and thin it with cream. Squeeze the cream out of the white bread and pour the cream into a cup, since you will need it again. Add the squeezed bread to the fish mixture and grind it as “finely” as possible with a blender or chopper. This gives the most uniform mixture and grinds up any remaining tiny bones. If you can, it is worth pushing the mixture through a mesh strainer or sieve, since it is not nice when bones or lumps of unground bread get into fish quenelles.
Salt and pepper the mixture. White pepper is better, as it is not so noticeable in a pale mixture. Thin the mixture with the cream left from soaking the bread, adding it little by little. The consistency should be like porridge, so that it can be scooped with a spoon. Quite often, though, the mixture is made quite runny.

How to shape and poach the quenelles

Shaping the mixture is a creative process. You can use an oblong spoon, which lets you quickly form elongated pieces. If you do not have one, it is quite easy and even convenient to shape quenelles with two ordinary tablespoons.

Shape the quenelles with two spoons. Scoop up the mixture with one spoon, press it with the second and lift it out of the first with a turn around the axis of the spoon. You get egg-shaped pieces. Learning to shape quenelles with two spoons is extremely simple: a few minutes and the skill sticks.
Poach the quenelles in one of two ways. Put them in a deep frying pan or pot, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and cook for 4-5 mins over low heat, without a rolling boil. Or simply dip the ready balls into boiling water for the same time. The quenelles should become firm and hold their shape. After that they are practically ready to eat: lift them out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and move them to another pot or pan.

How to braise the quenelles in tomato sauce

The quenelles then need to be braised in sauce for a while. A creamy béchamel sauce works well. We decided to make a simple tomato sauce.

Pour the sauce over the quenelles and braise covered. Pour good homemade tomato juice into the pan with the balls, add a little salt and pepper, 1 tsp of sugar (5 g), a little sweet paprika and ground coriander. Add the remaining 50 ml of cream. Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat to low and braise the dish covered for 10-15 mins.

Serving

Put the quenelles in a soup plate and spoon the sauce over them. You can sprinkle with a pinch of very finely chopped herbs, but not too aromatic ones.
The dish has an unusually delicate creamy flavor that goes superbly with tomato. It is a self-sufficient fish main course. Still, mashed potatoes as a side will not hurt.

Calories and macros

310 kcal

Serving ≈ 200 g

Protein29 g37% of kcal
Fat14 g41% of kcal
Carbs17 g22% of kcal

100 g157 kcalProtein 14.4 gFat 6.9 gCarbs 8.4 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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Pike Quenelles in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

For the quenelles

For the sauce

For serving