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Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish: Broiled
BROILED FISH Any fish that presents, when dressed, a thin flat appearance, as mackerel, bass, or bluefish, or a fish that may be cut in slices, as halibut, salmon or sword fish, may be broiled. While all the fish mentioned may be broiled, preference would be given to an oily fish as it is not easy to baste a fish while broiling, and a dry fish can ill afford to lose any of its juices. Mackerel, salmon, and bluefish are especially good for broiling. A whole mackerel, but slices of salmon and bluefish should be purchased. Sometimes it is possible to buy half a bluefish, cut lengthwise of the fish. Half a four-pound fish may not be too much for two, as the portion left over makes a most palatable salad.
BROILED BLUEFISH Heat the broiler and rub over the wires on the inside with a piece of fat salt pork. Set the fish in place, and the broiler over the coals or under the gas flame, with the flesh side towards the heat and rather close to it. After a few seconds, less than a minute, draw the broiler farther from the fire, to finish the cooking. Over the coals turn the broiler, occasionally, to cook the skin side of the fish. As the skin burns easily the cooking must be done, largely, on the flesh side. Whenever the flesh side is to be turned to the coals, brush it over with a little melted butter. Cook from fifteen to twenty minutes. When the fish is cooked, remove the broiler to a zinc-covered table or board (a labor-saving article the value of which in a kitchen can scarcely be estimated) or to a large agate or tin dish, then press the back of a four-pronged fork down upon the fish in such a manner that two prongs of the fork will be on either side of a wire of the broiler, now gently draw the fork down the wire the full width of the fish, thus separating the flesh from the wire of the broiler; repeat this with each wire on one side, then turn the broiler and repeat on the other side, when the fish may be slipped - skin side down - from the broiler to a platter made hot to receive it. Spread the fish with maitre d'hotel butter and serve at once.
BROILED HALIBUT OR OTHER SLICED FISH Heat and oil the broiler as above; brush over both sides of the halibut with butter or salt pork fat, then set in place in the broiler; cook ten seconds and turn; repeat this for three or four minutes, then baste with fat and draw farther from the fire and let cook about fifteen minutes, turning each three or four minutes. Use a four-tined fork to separate the fish from the broiler (see preceding recipe) and slide to a hot platter. Spread with maitre d'hotel butter (page 196) and serve at once.
This is broiling in the older sense: a hinged wire broiler holding the fish, set over coals or under a gas flame, with the cook moving the whole apparatus toward and away from the heat. A modern oven broiler and a sheet pan get you to the same place with less choreography.
- The hinged broilerA double-sided wire basket with a long handle, greased so the flesh releases. Without one, broil skin-side down on a foiled, oiled sheet pan about 4 inches below the element and do not turn the fish at all — the fork-and-wire extraction ritual described here exists only to solve a problem the basket creates.
- The hinge of the methodThe initial blast close to the heat sets and browns the surface; everything after that is gentler cooking at a distance. Skip the sear and oily fish weeps fat and steams; stay close the whole time and the skin blackens before the center is warm.
- Timing is the part to overturnFifteen to twenty minutes will dry out most fillets. Reckon roughly 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, so a 1-inch bluefish fillet or halibut steak wants 8 to 10 minutes total. Pull the fish when the flesh is just opaque and flakes at the thickest part, about 130-140F for salmon, 145F for lean white fish.
- Turning sliced fish every ten secondsThe rapid early flipping is there to keep a lean steak from sticking and scorching in the wire basket. On a sheet pan under a broiler it is unnecessary: one turn, or none, is enough for a steak under an inch and a half.
- Salt pork fatRubbing the wires with fat salt pork both greases and seasons. Bacon fat, clarified butter, or a neutral oil all work; plain butter alone will scorch at broiler heat.
- Maitre d'hotel butterConventionally softened butter worked with lemon juice, chopped parsley, salt and pepper, chilled and sliced; the book gives its own version on the page referenced. It stands in for the basting the recipe says is difficult mid-cook, so do not leave it out.
- "Dressed" and "half a fish cut lengthwise"Dressed means gutted, scaled and trimmed, head sometimes on. Half a bluefish cut lengthwise is what a fishmonger now sells as a large fillet; ask for it skin-on, since the skin is what holds the piece together under high heat.
- Zinc-covered tableA period kitchen fitting, and not something to seek out — zinc surfaces corrode with acids and are no longer used for food work. Any heatproof board or sheet pan serves.
- YieldThe book allows that half a four-pound bluefish may not be too much for two, with enough left over for a salad. A pound of halibut steak, roughly two 8-ounce pieces, is a fair dinner for two with no remainder.
The book's framing — fish under "true proteids" — places it squarely in the domestic science movement of the 1890s and 1900s, when American cookbooks were being rewritten around the nutritional categories then taught in Boston-style cooking schools: proteids, carbohydrates, fats. The practical advice, though, is older than the chemistry. Broiling in a hinged wire broiler over coals appears to have been a common treatment for oily fish in nineteenth-century kitchens, and the preference for mackerel, bluefish and salmon probably has more to do with what was cheap and abundant on the Atlantic coast than with any theory of nutrition: bluefish in particular was a summer glut fish, plentiful enough that a household could buy half of one and expect to eat the remainder cold in salad. The mention of swordfish — listed among the fish that can be cut in slices — is a period marker of a different kind: it was then a modest market fish, long before it became expensive or the subject of mercury advisories.Maitre d'hotel butter, the finish for both versions, entered American books from French restaurant practice and was by 1900 a common accompaniment to broiled fish or steak.