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Fillet of Flounder Au Gratin
5 pounds flounder
I bay-leaf
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons butter or other
1 tablespoon lemon-juice fat
1 slice onion
1 cup fine bread-crums
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.
The ingredient list has come through the printing in two columns and reads as a jumble; untangled it is 5 lb flounder, 1 bay leaf, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 cups chicken stock, 3 tablespoons butter or other fat, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 slice onion, 1 cup fine bread crumbs, and salt and pepper. The rest is a plain velouté poured over raw fillets and baked.
- The timing is the problemTwenty minutes in a hot oven will dry out flounder fillets, which are rarely more than half an inch thick. Fillets under the hot sauce are cooked through in 10 to 12 minutes at 425F; they are done when the flesh is opaque and separates at the touch.
- "Hot oven"In period usage this means roughly 400 to 450F; 425F is a safe reading. The high heat is there to colour the crumbs, which is also why the fish overcooks at the stated time.
- Five pounds of flounderThat is whole fish, not fillets; the recipe tells you to fillet it yourself. Five pounds of whole flounder yields something like 1 1/2 to 2 lb of boneless fillet. If you buy fillets, buy about 2 lb.
- Crumbs want fatDry crumbs scattered on wet sauce go pale and pasty. Toss the cup of fine crumbs with a tablespoon or two of melted butter before sprinkling, or brown them briefly in a pan first.
- The sauceRubbing flour and fat together cold and then adding liquid is the old "kneaded butter" method; it works, but whisk the stock in gradually or it will lump. Twenty minutes of gentle simmering both cooks out the raw flour and reduces the two cups to a sauce that will cling. Strain out the onion and bay leaf as directed.
- Chicken stock with fishNot an error: the book calls for it plainly, and chicken stock gives a rounder sauce than water. Fish stock or a light vegetable stock is equally at home.
- Chilling the fillets"Set in a cool place till needed" would have meant an icebox or cool larder; use the refrigerator. The salted fish will give up a little liquid, so pour that off before saucing to keep the gratin from going watery.
- Gratin dishA shallow, wide, oven-to-table dish, since the recipe expects you to serve from it. Use one large enough that the fillets lie in a single layer rather than overlapping.
Flounder was widely available on American Atlantic markets when this book appeared, and household manuals of the period made frequent use of au gratin treatments for a mild, thin, easily overcooked fish that takes well to being blanketed in sauce and crumbs. The phrase means only "with a crust" — gratter, to scrape, originally the browned scrapings from the dish — and in this period it did not necessarily imply cheese, as the absence of any here shows. Butterick published for the same middle-class housekeeper who bought its dress patterns, and the assumptions show: buy the whole fish, fillet it yourself, hold it in the cool larder until dinner, and carry it to the table in the dish it baked in so nothing is lost in transfer.