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Fillet of Flounder Au Gratin
5 pounds flounder 2 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons butter or other fat I cup fine bread-crums I bay-leaf 2 cups chicken stock I tablespoon lemon-juice I slice onion Salt and pepper Fillet and cut the fish into pieces about four inches long by three wide. Oil a baking or gratin dish and lay the fillets in it. Sprinkle salt and pepper over them and set in a cool place till needed. Rub together flour and fat; add onion, bay-leaf, chicken stock, and salt and pepper as needed. Simmer gently twenty minutes and then add lemon-juice, strain the sauce and pour it over the fish. Season lightly with salt and pepper, sprinkle bread-crums over the sauce and fish. Bake twenty minutes in a hot oven and serve at once in the same dish.
A straightforward baked fish under a strained velouté-style sauce. The whole thing hinges on the fillets going into a hot oven thin and cold, so that the crumbs brown in the same twenty minutes it takes the fish to just set.
- Hot ovenRead "hot oven" as roughly 400-450F, the range the term usually covered. Much cooler and the crumbs stay pale while the flounder overcooks.
- Twenty minutes is for the sauce, not a rule for the fishTwenty minutes' baking is generous for thin fillets -- Thin flounder fillets in a shallow dish are done in 10-15 minutes; they are cooked when the flesh is opaque and parts under light pressure. Check at 12 minutes and pull them then, even if the crumbs need a moment under the broiler afterwards.
- 5 pounds of flounderThe recipe tells the cook to fillet the fish, so this is whole weight. Flatfish yield roughly 35-45 per cent as fillets, so figure on about 2 lb of usable meat. Buying 2 lb of ready-cut fillets gets you to the same place.
- Rub together flour and fatThis is a roux made cold rather than cooked, then let down with stock. Two tablespoons flour to two cups stock gives a deliberately light, pourable sauce, not a thick gratin cream — do not thicken it further or it will sit on the fish rather than around it.
- Strain and season at the endThe onion slice and bay leaf are there to be removed; the twenty-minute simmer is what pulls flavour out of them and cooks the raw flour taste out of the sauce. The lemon juice goes in after the simmering, as directed.
- Gratin dishA shallow, wide oven-to-table dish, as the recipe intends the fish to be served in it. A ceramic or enamelled pie plate or a 9x13 baking dish works; depth is the enemy here.
- The crumbsDry crumbs sprinkled over wet sauce brown unevenly. Tossing the cup of crumbs with a tablespoon of melted butter first, or dotting them with butter, gets the even gold crust the dish is aiming for.
- Chicken stock with fishNot a misprint for fish stock. Light chicken stock was a common household base at the time and gives a rounder sauce than water; a mild stock, not a strongly reduced one.