Broiled Halibut
Procure a slice of fish one and one-half inch thick, cut or pull off the skin, rub with salt and pepper, and brush with table oil or melted butter. Then broil in a double wire gridiron from six to ten minutes, according to the heat, turning the gridiron frequently. Lay the fish when done upon a hot platter, and turn oyster sauce over it.
A single thick halibut steak, seared over live coals and sauced. The method translates cleanly to a broiler or grill, but the fish is unforgiving of overcooking.
- The hinge: stop earlyA 1½-inch halibut steak is done at 130-135F at the centre, when the flesh has just turned opaque and the flakes separate under light pressure. Halibut is lean and dries into cotton within a minute or two past that point.
- "Table oil"Simply a mild edible oil of the period, olive oil or one of the cheaper seed oils then sold for the table. Any neutral oil or clarified butter works; whole butter will scorch under a hot broiler.
- Double wire gridironA hinged basket that clamps the fish so it can be flipped without breaking. A hinged grill basket does the same job over charcoal; under a modern broiler, set the steak on a lightly oiled rack about 4 inches from the element and turn it once with a wide spatula.
- Six to ten minutesThat range assumes a fierce coal fire and constant turning. Under a home broiler figure 5-7 minutes per side for a 1½-inch steak, and check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- SkinningHalibut skin is tough and pulls away readily from a cold steak if you work a knife tip under one corner first. Leaving it on is also defensible over coals, since it holds the steak together.
- Oyster sauceNot the bottled Cantonese condiment. In cookery of this period it means a white or butter sauce with poached shucked oysters and their liquor folded in at the end. Add the oysters off the heat and let them just firm up, about a minute; boiled oysters turn to rubber.
- YieldA 1½-inch steak of this kind runs 1 to 1½ lb and serves two, or three at a multi-course table.
Halibut was a common market fish on both American coasts by the 1890s, when rail refrigeration carried Atlantic and later Pacific catches inland in quantity, and its firm, thick-cut flesh suited it well to broiling. The double wire gridiron this recipe calls for was standard kit for coal-range and open-fire cookery, and the instruction to turn it frequently belongs to a kitchen where heat came from below and could not be dialed down. Pairing broiled fish with oyster sauce was a common nineteenth-century American combination, oysters then being cheap and abundant enough to serve as a garnish rather than the main event; The Butterick Cook Book (1911), issued by the pattern company as part of its household-advice publishing, gives the pairing as a matter of course.