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Broiled Halibut
Cut some slices from a halibut, dust over salt and pepper, place them in a dish, cover with warm butter and leave for half an hour. Roll them in flour and broil over a very clear fire for twelve or fifteen minutes. Place them on a dish with a garnish of parsley and slices of lemon and serve. The slices of halibut should be about one inch thick, and three tablespoonfuls of butter may be used for every pound weight of fish.
A straightforward broiled fish steak whose only real technique is the butter soak before flouring. The stated time is the one thing to distrust.
- TimingTwelve to fifteen minutes is long for a one-inch halibut steak, which is lean and dries out quickly; modern practice would be closer to 8 to 10 minutes total, turning once. Cooks who follow current food-safety guidance will want 145F at the centre; those who prefer fish just set often pull it earlier and let it carry over.
- "A very clear fire"This means coals burned down to steady glowing heat with no flame and no smoke, since fat dripping into flame would soot the fish. Under a gas or electric broiler, use high heat with the rack about 4 inches from the element.
- Warm butter, not melted-hotWarm butter -- 'Cover with warm butter' most likely means butter melted and warmed, not hot enough to begin cooking the surface. The three tablespoons per pound is the recipe's own figure; it is doing the work an oil marinade would do now.
- The flour coatingRoll in flour only after the half-hour soak and only just before the fish goes on the fire. Flour left to sit on wet butter turns to paste and will not brown.
- Preventing stickingHalibut has little fat and grips bare metal. Oil the grate or a broiler pan well, or use a fish grill basket, and turn the steaks only once.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Reckoning a one-inch steak of 8 to 10 oz as one serving, two pounds of fish would serve three to four with the parsley and lemon garnish as written.
Halibut was one of the great workhorses of the American hotel kitchen around 1900: an enormous North Atlantic flatfish that could be cut into firm, uniform, bone-in steaks, which would generally have suited a restaurant line better than a delicate fillet. Broiling and garnishing with parsley and lemon is often said to have been the default treatment for firm fish in the period, and the butter steeping is the era's standard insurance against dryness over a grill. The instruction to broil over a "very clear fire" is a reminder that hotel ranges of the day are generally understood to have burned coal or coke, and that judging the fire, rather than setting a dial, was the cook's actual skill.