Boiling Fish
The get along-without policy of neglecting to provide the kitchen with necessary utensils operates serious y against good cookery in average hotels. There is no question but that in the fitting up of every new hotel some money is wasted in buying useless articles to suit the cranks and notions of the chef that is going to take charge--things like costly copper moulds, bain maries, patent machines, etc., which none of his successors in the same place will ever use, and proprietors having had experience of such follies are apt to take a grim revenge by refusing to buy any uncommon article at all. Now there must be, and it pays to have in the kitchens even of small and unpretentious houses, a fish boiler with its drainer or false bottom and hooked upright at each end to lift it and the fish out by; a stock boiler with its false bottom and faucet; a potato fryer with its suspended drainer; a time-saving large coffee mill, and other things scarcely less important but none of them commonly to be found. It pays because some of the finest fishes are finest flavored when boiled, and if they can not be for want of the proper appliances they have to suffer deterioration by more expensive frying and baking. A fish may be boiled in a stove wash-boiler and fished out with two skimmers, but no company will insure it against breakage. What must be must and in such a case you had better roll up the fish in a clean pudding-cloth, tying the ends and pinning the middle, and carefully roll it cut on to its dish when done.
Any tinner can make a poissoniere or fish boiler. It should be long enough for a good sized Mackinaw trout whole, and wide enough for two or three on the drainer. It has sides straight up and a lid.
To boil a large trout, whitefish, redfish, sheephead or salmon for salad: Scale and clean the fish, clip off the fins but leave the head and tail on, and lay it in a pan of cold water. Draw some clear soupstock into the fish kettle (the stock is already slightly seasoned with vegetables), to one-third fill it. Throw in a basting-spoonful of salt, a tablespoonful of pepper-corns, half a bayleaf, a small onion with six cloves stuck in it and a small piece of horse-radish. Also a cupful of wine if afforded, sherry or claret--keep the cheap sweet angelicas and the like for ices and jellies--if no wine half a cup of vinegar instead. Let this liquor come to a boil, then wipe the fish clean and dry, lay it on the drainer and let come to a boil quickly. Then put on the lid and move the kettle to the side of the range to simmer slowly. Rapid boiling breaks the fish. Too much cooking softens it. Half an hour is the average time it takes to boil a fish just done, but varies according to the size. Redfish and salmon, being solid fleshed, bear longer boiling than lake trout. Cool the fish in the liquor it was boiled in.
Behind the equipment lecture is a straightforward court-bouillon poach for a whole large fish, served cold. The instructions assume a hotel range and a fish kettle; both are easy enough to work around.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe fish goes into liquid already at a boil, is brought back to a boil quickly, then covered and moved to the side of the range to simmer slowly. Rapid boiling breaks the fish, exactly as the text says.
- If you have no fish kettleA roasting pan across two burners, covered with foil, holds a 4-6 lb fish; a large oval Dutch oven takes a smaller one curled. The pudding-cloth trick in the text still works and is the most reliable way to lift a whole fish intact — cheesecloth, doubled, with long tails left at each end as handles.
- Thirty minutes is too long for most fishThe text offers that only as an average, and says itself that it varies with size. Modern practice is roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, or an internal temperature of 135-140F at the backbone. A 4 lb whitefish is likely done in 20 minutes or less.
- "A basting-spoonful of salt"A hotel basting spoon holds on the order of 2 to 3 fl oz, so this is perhaps four tablespoons or more — but it is seasoning several quarts of stock that will mostly be discarded, not the fish directly. Aim for water noticeably salty, around 1 tablespoon per quart.
- The stock"Clear soupstock... already slightly seasoned with vegetables" probably means a light meat stock from the hotel stockpot, seasoned with vegetables but not yet salted. Plain water with a chopped onion, carrot and celery stalk works; a fish fumet is better still. The kettle is filled only one-third, so the fish steams as much as it poaches.
- Wine or vinegarA cup of dry sherry or claret, or half a cup of vinegar, sets the surface protein and keeps the flesh firm. The warning against "cheap sweet angelicas" is a warning against fortified dessert wine — any dry white or a light red does the job.
- The fish namedMackinaw trout is lake trout. Sheephead here is the freshwater drum of the Great Lakes, not the Atlantic sheepshead. Redfish most likely means red drum. Any firm whole fish of 3-8 lb — salmon, char, striped bass, whitefish — behaves the same way.
- Cooling in the liquorCorrect technique, and it keeps the fish moist for salad, but cool it down fast: set the pot in an ice bath until it is below room temperature, then refrigerate. A stockpot of warm court-bouillon left standing on the bench overnight sits in the danger zone for hours.
- YieldA whole 5 lb fish, poached and skinned, gives roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb of picked flesh — enough salad for 8-10.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of practical trade manuals that Jessup Whitehead wrote out of Chicago hotel kitchens in the 1880s and 1890s, and this page is characteristic of him: half a grumble about proprietors who will not buy a fish kettle, half a working method. The method itself is the classic court-bouillon — an aromatic, acidulated liquid in which fish is gently poached and then left to cool, a technique standard in French kitchens long before it reached American hotel ranges. The equipment complaint is not padding. A poissonnière, with its perforated drainer and lifting handles, is the one utensil that makes whole-fish poaching possible at volume, and Whitehead's point is economic: without it a house is forced into frying and baking, which cost more in fat and fuel and, to his taste, suit these fish less well. The instruction to boil a fish "for salad" reflects a period fondness for cold poached salmon and lake trout dressed with mayonnaise, a buffet and banquet staple in American hotels of the era.