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Broiled Perch
Choose perch of a moderate size, fresh from the water; scale and clean them, and dry them in a napkin. Melt a good quantity of butter with some salt, let it be thick when it has cooled a little; dip the perch in it, and roll it about till the butter sticks well to every part of it; then set a gridiron over a very clear fire, but let it stand some distance from the fire, for the perch must be well cooked before it is browned. Serve on a bed of fried parsley, garnish with quarters of lemon.
A clear, simple grill recipe that depends on two things: whole fish and patience with the heat. Perch are small, so the butter coating and the distance from the fire are doing the work of keeping them moist.
- Gridiron to grillA gridiron over a clear fire is a grate over coals that have burned down past flame — no smoke, steady radiant heat. On a gas grill use medium, lid up; under a broiler set the pan on a low rack, 6-8 inches from the element, and expect 5-7 minutes a side for fish of 8-10 oz.
- "Some distance from the fire"This is the hinge. Whole perch on the bone need the interior to reach about 145F before the skin darkens; too close to the heat and the outside blackens over raw flesh at the spine. Cook slow, then move closer for the last minute if you want colour.
- The butter coat'Melted butter cooled until thick' most likely means barely set, thick enough to cling instead of running off. Clarified butter scorches less on a grill, since it lacks the milk solids that brown and turn bitter, though those same solids help whole butter grip the fish.
- Fresh from the waterWritten when chilled storage for inland fish was patchy, and the point still stands with perch, which soften quickly. Buy them whole and stiff, with clear eyes; this is a whole-fish method, so fillets, frozen or otherwise, are not what it is for.
- ScalingPerch scales are small, hard and firmly set. Scale under water in a sink or outdoors, working tail to head, and trim the sharp dorsal spines with scissors before handling further.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf or curly parsley, dried thoroughly, dropped into 350F fat for 20-30 seconds until it stops sputtering and turns brittle-dark green. Wet parsley will spit violently; dry it in a towel first.
- QuantityNo yield is given. Allow two perch per person for fish of 8 oz or under, one for anything larger, and salt lightly at table since the butter is already salted.
Perch belong to the older, more local strand of the Waldorf book: Oscar Tschirky's collection ranges from elaborate hotel cookery to plain instructions like this one, which has the feel of an English or American household manual of the mid-nineteenth century rather than of a 1890s hotel range — the gridiron, the napkin, the bed of fried parsley all belong to that older idiom. Yellow perch were a staple catch of the Great Lakes and the rivers of the Northeast, sold cheaply and cooked whole, and "fresh from the water" was a real instruction in a period when inland fish reached most tables only if caught nearby. Fried parsley as a bed for grilled or fried fish is often said to have been a common garnish in this period, and the lemon quarters are the whole of the sauce, which tells you how much confidence the writer placed in good butter and a clean fire.