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Broiled Pompano
Thoroughly scrape and clean a Pompano, and if it is a large one, divide it down the back and through the head; but if it be a small fish, weighing only about a pound, it may be cooked whole; sprinkle over salt and pepper, and place it on a gridiron over a clear fire, with the skin side downward, and after warming a little, brush it over with butter, adding a little more salt and pepper if desired, and return it to the gridiron to broil on both sides until done, when it may be placed on a dish, a little lemon juice squeezed over it, and served with tartar sauce, either poured over or served separately in a sauceboat.
A whole-fish broil that depends almost entirely on fire management: pompano is oily enough to baste itself, but the flesh is thin and goes from moist to chalky in under a minute.
- "A clear fire"This means charcoal or wood burned down to glowing coals with no flame or smoke, not a gas grill on high. Under a modern broiler element, set the fish about 4 inches from the heat; the result is close, though the coals give a drier, smokier surface.
- The gridironA hinged wire fish basket does the job of the period gridiron and lets you turn a whole fish without tearing it. Oil the bars well; pompano skin sticks hard.
- TimingA one-pound whole pompano needs roughly 4-5 minutes a side; a butterflied larger fish needs 3-4 minutes skin-side first, then 2-3 minutes flesh-side. "Until done" here is flesh that has just turned opaque at the bone.
- Skin side down firstThis is the hinge of the recipe. Starting skin-down sets the skin and lets the fat under it render, so the flesh stays moist when you flip it. Buttering after the initial warming, as written, keeps the butter from burning to soot on the coals.
- Splitting through the headDividing down the back leaves the belly intact and the fish opens flat. A fishmonger will do this if asked for a butterflied whole pompano, head on.
- SourcingFlorida pompano is still fished commercially in the Gulf and South Atlantic and remains expensive. Do not substitute so-called "Pacific pompano" (butterfish); it is smaller and much softer. Small mackerel or a whole butterflied bluefish behave similarly on a grill.
- Tartar sauceThe period sauce is mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins, shallot and parsley, not the sweet commercial version. Make it thick enough to sit beside the fish rather than run off it.
- YieldOne pound whole fish per person; a two- to three-pound split pompano serves two to three.
Pompano was among the most prized fish on American menus in the decades around 1900, and it carried a distinctly Gulf Coast prestige: New Orleans restaurants built dishes around it, and hotels further north advertised it as a delicacy shipped up on ice. Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf whose name fronts this 1896 collection, was compiling the working repertoire of a hotel kitchen that bought the best fish it could get and then did as little as possible to it. The plainness of the treatment is the point: broiling over clear coals with butter, lemon and tartar sauce is often said to have been a characteristic Gilded Age presentation for a fish good enough to stand alone. The gridiron itself was still ordinary equipment in a professional kitchen of the period, set over a coal range or a dedicated broiling fire rather than the enclosed gas broilers that came into use in the following generation.