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Breslin Baked Bluefish
Split and bone a bluefish, place on a well-buttered sheet, and cook twenty minutes in a hot oven. Cream one-fourth cup butter, add yolks two eggs, and when well mixed add two tablespoons, each, onion, capers, pickles, and parsley, finely chopped; two tablespoons lemon juice, one tablespoon vinegar, one-half teaspoon salt, and one-third teaspoon paprika. Sprinkle fish with salt, spread with mixture, and continue the baking until fish is done. Remove to serving-dish and garnish with potato balls, cucumber ribbons, lemon cut in fancy shapes, and parsley.
Bluefish à l'Italienne Clean a four-pound bluefish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put on buttered fish-sheet in a dripping-pan. Add three tablespoons white wine, three tablespoons mushroom liquor, one-half onion finely chopped, eight mushrooms finely chopped, and enough water to allow sufficient liquor in pan for basting. Bake forty-five minutes in hot oven, basting five times. Serve with Sauce à l'Italienne.
Two bluefish recipes run together here: a split fish finished under a caper-and-egg-yolk butter, and a whole fish braise-baked with wine and mushrooms. Both assume a wood or coal range at full heat and a fishmonger who will bone a fish for you.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures, only the term; "hot oven" is usually read today as somewhere around 400-450F. The first recipe's twenty minutes plus a finishing period, and the second's forty-five minutes, assume that sort of heat.
- The fish-sheetA perforated tin or wire sheet laid in the dripping-pan so the fish could be lifted out whole without breaking. A flat rack in a sheet pan, or a doubled sling of parchment, does the same work.
- Real cooking timesCurrent guidance is 145F at the thickest point (many cooks pull oily fish nearer 130-135F, which is below that guidance), roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness. A split, boned fillet will be cooked through in well under the twenty minutes given, so add the butter mixture early and count on 12-15 minutes total rather than twenty plus more.
- The yolk butter is not a sauceCreamed butter with raw yolks beaten in, then thinned with lemon juice and vinegar, is a spread that sets in the oven's heat into a soft crust. Work the acid in a little at a time or it will break, and do not try to warm it beforehand.
- Mushroom liquorThe soaking or cooking liquid from mushrooms, kept back for flavour. Dried mushrooms soaked in hot water give a stronger version; the liquid from canned mushrooms would also have served.
- Sauce à l'ItalienneSauce a l'Italienne -- cross-referenced to another recipe in the book. Classically it is a brown or white sauce with finely chopped mushrooms, shallot and herbs. The second fish is unsauced without it, so make it while the fish bakes.
- GarnishesPotato balls are potato cut with a small scoop and boiled or browned in butter; cucumber ribbons are long peeled strips, usually salted and chilled crisp. Both are decorative rather than structural and can be skipped.
- Buying and yieldBluefish is oily and turns strong and fishy within a day or two, so buy it very fresh or use mackerel or Spanish mackerel instead. A four-pound whole fish serves four to five.
Bluefish was one of the cheapest and most abundant fish on the Atlantic coast when this book was written, landed in quantity through New York and New England markets, and its oiliness suits the sharp, acid treatment used here -- capers, pickles, lemon, vinegar -- that cuts richness the way a remoulade cuts fried fish. The name "Breslin" may point to a hotel kitchen; American cookbooks of the period did borrow and credit preparations from the big hotels and their French-trained chefs, which would fit the second recipe's white wine, mushroom liquor and named sauce a l'italienne.