Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Broiled Trout (Clean and wipe the fish quite)
Broiled Trout (Clean and wipe the fish quite)
Clean and wipe the fish quite dry, split it down the back and let it soak for nearly an hour in warm butter with chopped sweet herbs, salt, pepper and parsley; then cover it with sifted breadcrumbs and broil it over a clear fire. Serve with lemon juice or orange juice squeezed over. Fillets of Turbot with Cream Sauce Separate the fillets from the bones of some cooked turbot, skin them, leave till cold, then cut them into collops. Put one tablespoonful of flour into a stewpan with four ounces of butter and one-half teacupful of cream, a pinch of cayenne pepper and a small quantity of glaze; season to taste with salt, stir the sauce over the fire until it is thick, then remove it to the side and put in the fillets of turbot. Turn the turbot and sauce on to a hot dish and serve. If preferred, the mixture can be served in a vol-au-vent.
Two dishes run together in the original text: a split, crumbed broiled trout and a reheated turbot in cream sauce. Both assume a cook with stock, glaze and cooked fish already on hand.
- "A clear fire"This means a charcoal or wood fire burned down past smoke and flame to steady embers, so the crumbs brown without soot. A gas or electric broiler at full heat, with the fish four to five inches from the element, is the working equivalent — roughly four minutes a side for a split trout.
- The warm butter soakAn hour in warm butter at room temperature is a long hold for fresh fish. Keep the butter just melted rather than hot, cover the dish and refrigerate it, and count the hour as the maximum rather than the target.
- Split down the backButterflying through the backbone rather than the belly is what lets a whole trout lie flat under heat and cook evenly. Ask for it boned and butterflied if you would rather not do it yourself; the crumb coating goes on the cut face.
- Turbot and its substitutesTurbot is a European flatfish, expensive and uncommon on American counters. Halibut, brill or a thick fillet of sole behave the same way here — the recipe wants firm, already-cooked white fish that will not fall apart when turned in sauce.
- CollopsAn old word for thick slices or scallops of meat or fish, cut across the fillet. Aim for pieces about half an inch thick so they warm through without breaking up.
- GlazeGlace de viande: veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup, kept as a jelly and used by the spoonful for depth and gloss. A teaspoon of commercial demi-glace or a reduced fish fumet does the same job; without it the sauce is simply flour, butter and cream.
- A teacupfulNot a fixed measure, and cookbooks of the period differ; it is usually reckoned somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a cup. Start at half a cup of cream against the tablespoon of flour and four ounces of butter and loosen the sauce from there.
- Do not boil the fish in the sauceThe instruction to move the pan to the side of the fire is the hinge. The turbot is already cooked; it needs only to warm through in the finished sauce, and a return to the boil will both curdle the cream and shred the fish.
- YieldOne trout per person. The turbot dish gives no quantity of fish at all ('some cooked turbot'); the sauce, from a tablespoonful of flour, four ounces of butter and half a teacupful of cream, is a small quantity, enough to coat a first-course portion for a few people or to fill a handful of small vol-au-vent cases.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel — but his 1896 Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf collected the repertoire of a hotel kitchen cooking in the French manner for New York money. Both dishes here show that world's assumptions: a brigade with glaze in the larder, cream by the teacupful, and cooked turbot on hand to be turned into something salable. Turbot itself was a mark of expense in American hotels, since it had to be shipped from European waters, while trout could be had domestically. The vol-au-vent finish — puff pastry cases filled at the last moment — dressed up the ragout without pretending it was anything else.