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Broiled Stuffed Fish
Steamed Halibut, Silesian Sauce Steam by cooking over boiling water a piece of halibut weighing two pounds, and serve with Silesian Sauce. ⅛ tablespoons vinegar ½ teaspoon powdered tarragon 3 peppercorns Bit of bay leaf Sprig of parsley ½ teaspoon finely chopped shallot Salt and cayenne Yolks 3 eggs 2/3 cup Brown Stock ¼ cup butter 1/2 tablespoon capers 1 tablespoon flour 1½ tablespoon parsley Cook first six ingredients until reduced one-half; strain, add yolks of eggs well beaten, one-half, each, brown stock and butter, and cook over hot water, stirring constantly until thickened. Then add, gradually, remaining butter mixed with flour and stock. As soon as mixture thickens, add capers, parsley finely chopped, and salt and cayenne.
A plainly steamed piece of halibut carrying a rich, tarragon-scented egg-and-brown-stock sauce — essentially a hollandaise built on meat stock rather than lemon. The fish is the easy part; the sauce needs attention.
- The hinge: keep the sauce below a simmerThe yolks are cooked over hot water, not boiling water, and stirred without pause. If the water beneath boils hard the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks past saving.
- Steaming the halibutThe recipe gives no time. A 2 lb piece set on a rack over boiling water will take somewhere in the region of 15-25 minutes depending on thickness; it is done when the flesh flakes at the bone. Halibut turns dry and cottony very quickly once past that point.
- Brown stockThis book means a long-simmered stock from browned beef bones and vegetables. A good unsalted beef stock, reduced until it has body, is the nearest substitute; the sauce will taste thin if you use plain broth from a carton without reducing it.
- Powdered tarragonDried tarragon crumbled fine works; jarred dried tarragon can be quite assertive, so start with less and taste after the reduction is strained.
- The split butter and stockHalf the butter and stock go in with the yolks; the rest is worked into the flour and added at the end as a beurre manie to finish the thickening.
- Small measuresThe printed page gives half a teaspoon each of powdered tarragon and chopped shallot, which is what our text now reads. Both are seasonings for a sauce of this size, so adjust by taste as you go.
- Reducing the infusionA tablespoon and a half of vinegar with the aromatics reduces to almost nothing very fast. Use a small pan, watch it, and do not let it go dry or the sauce loses its acid backbone.
- YieldTwo pounds of halibut serves four generously; the sauce as written comes to roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter, which is ample for that.
Sauces named for European regions and cities fill the sauce chapters of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, and "Silesian" belongs to that fashion rather than to any documented Silesian kitchen practice — Fannie Farmer's generation borrowed the vocabulary of French professional cookery, where a garnish or sauce is labelled by place as a kind of shorthand. What matters here is the structure: a reduced vinegar-and-herb infusion, egg yolks mounted with butter over hot water, and then meat stock — the same architecture as béarnaise, but darkened with brown stock and sharpened with capers. Serving a beef-stock sauce with steamed white fish looks odd now, though the pairing seems to have raised no eyebrows at the time.