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Boiled Red Snapper
After cleaning and washing a red snapper, wipe it dry and sew up in a coarse mosquito netting. Put it into a vessel with enough boiling water to cover it well, drop a pinch of salt in the water, and flavor with lemon juice. After the water comes to a boil turn the heat almost off, and let it simmer for half an hour. Take from the water carefully, drain, and unwrap; then turn out on a hot dish, and garnish with parsley, or serve with tomato sauce.
A plain poach in salted, acidulated water, written when whole fish came to the kitchen with the head on and were handled in a cloth sling. Everything hinges on keeping the water below a boil and on judging time by thickness rather than by the clock alone.
- The nettingCoarse mosquito netting was the cheap open-weave cloth of the period; use a double layer of cheesecloth, or wrap the fish in cheesecloth and lay it on a rack or in a fish poacher's insert. The point is to lift the fish out in one piece, not to strain anything.
- Never let it boilOnce the water reaches a boil, pull the heat back until the surface only shivers, around 175-180F. A rolling boil tears the skin and flakes the flesh apart before the interior is done.
- Half an hour is for a large fishThirty minutes suits a whole snapper of four pounds or more. Reckon roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, and check for 135-140F at the backbone; a 2 lb fish may be ready in 12-15 minutes.
- Water and flavoringA pinch of salt is far too little for the volume of water. Salt it as you would pasta water, about a tablespoon per quart, and add the lemon juice plus a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a slice of onion if you want the poaching liquid to be worth anything.
- Buying the fishTrue red snapper is tightly quota-managed and often substituted at the counter. Any firm white-fleshed round fish poaches the same way: black sea bass, striped bass, porgy or grouper.
- ServingSkin and lift the fillets off the frame at the table or in the kitchen while the fish is still hot; poached fish cools fast, so warm the platter and the sauce. A 4 lb whole fish serves four.
- Tomato sauceIn a book of this period this most likely means a plain cooked tomato sauce rather than a herbed pasta sauce. Thin it with a ladle of the strained poaching liquid so it clings without overwhelming the fish.
Boiled or poached whole fish of this kind was common in American hotel and household cooking through the later nineteenth century, and Gulf red snapper was shipped north on ice by rail from ports such as Pensacola and New Orleans. The mosquito netting points to a household with loose-woven netting on hand, though how usual that substitution was cannot be established from the recipe. Poaching suited large whole fish because it demanded no oven space and gave the pale, sauced presentation then considered proper for a dinner course.