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Red Snapper with Tomato Sauce
This is a delicious fish when well prepared. Scale the fish, rub well with pepper, inside and out. Let the the fish be wrapped in a cloth and kept on ice several hours. Cut up two onions, a carrot, and a celery root; let this boil in a quart of water; then put in the fish, whole or in pieces; the water should almost cover the fish; add a piece of butter, size of an egg, and three large tomatoes. (Three spoonfuls of canned tomatoes may be substituted.) Boil the fish until the fins will fall out easily if taken hold of-turn frequently while cooking. Put the fish upon a platter when done, handling it very carefully. Strain the sauce; let it boil. Mix with a cup of fresh cream one teaspoonful of flour. Garnish the fish with chopped parsley, pour the sauce over the fish, mixing it well with the parsley. The yolks of eggs may be used instead of cream for the sauce. This fish is very nice fried.
A poached whole fish in a vegetable-and-tomato court bouillon, finished with cream. The original assumes you know how to handle a whole fish and gives no times or quantities for seasoning.
- The hinge: don't boil itThe recipe says boil, but a rolling boil will shred a snapper and toughen the flesh. Bring the vegetable broth to a boil, then drop to a bare simmer once the fish goes in. Turning a whole fish "frequently" is also best ignored — turn it once, if at all.
- Doneness"Until the fins fall out easily" is a sound old test. The recipe gives no fish size or time; as a rough modern guide, allow about 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a simmer, so a whole snapper of a few pounds will take somewhere near 20-25 minutes. The flesh should part cleanly from the backbone; cooks who use a thermometer generally pull fish between 130F and 145F, the higher figure being the official food-safety recommendation.
- The chilling stepThe fish is rubbed with pepper and held wrapped in cloth on ice for several hours; the recipe gives no reason, though chilling does help a whole fish hold together in the poaching liquid. Modern equivalent: season, wrap in cheesecloth or parchment, refrigerate. Do not leave a fish sitting at room temperature for this.
- Butter "size of an egg"About 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons.
- Celery rootCeleriac, still sold in winter. One small bulb, peeled and diced. If you can't find it, use three or four ribs of celery with their leaves — the flavour is similar though less sweet.
- The cream finishA teaspoon of flour in a cup of cream is a very light thickener; it will give a thin, glossy sauce rather than a coating one. Temper it into the strained, boiling liquid off the heat and return to a low simmer, whisking, for a minute or two. The egg-yolk version must not boil at all or it curdles — hold it below 180F.
- Canned tomato substitution"Three spoonfuls" for three large tomatoes is a poor trade by volume. Three large fresh tomatoes are roughly 1 lb; use about a cup of canned tomatoes, drained, for a comparable result.
- SaltThe recipe calls for pepper only. Salt the poaching liquid so it tastes seasoned, or the fish will come out flat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no size or yield; a whole snapper of 3-4 lb would serve about four as a main course. Reserve the strained poaching liquid — it makes a good base for a fish soup.
Red snapper was a Gulf of Mexico fish that reached northern tables in quantity only after ice-packed rail shipping made it practical in the later nineteenth century. The method here is loosely a court bouillon — onion, carrot, celery root and a little acid, here from tomato rather than the wine or vinegar a court bouillon conventionally uses, following the broad French approach to poaching a whole fish, reduced and enriched with cream or egg yolk to make the sauce. The offhand closing line, "This fish is very nice fried," appends an alternative treatment rather than devoting a separate entry to it.