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Fried Fillets of Pike
Cut the fillets carefully off a pike, wash and dry them well, then dip them in beaten egg and breadcrumbs and fry in plenty of oil. When nicely browned drain the fillets, arrange them in a circle on a hot dish, fill the center with matelote sauce and serve.
A plain egg-and-crumb fry that depends almost entirely on two things the original leaves unsaid: getting the bones out of the pike, and having matelote sauce ready before the fish goes into the pan.
- The bones are the whole jobPike carry a row of forked Y-bones running through the upper fillet in addition to the ordinary pin bones, and they cannot be pulled with tweezers. Either cut them out as a narrow strip along the length of the fillet, or ask for the fillet to be scored crosswise at close intervals so the bone fragments soften in the frying.
- "Plenty of oil" means a deep fryEnough oil to float the fillets. The book gives no temperature; in modern terms aim for roughly 350-375F, a neutral oil, and a thermometer. If the oil cools below about 325F the crumbs soak rather than crisp.
- Flour firstThe instruction goes straight from dry fish to beaten egg. A light dusting of flour before the egg gives the coating something to grip, and without it the crust tends to slide off the fillet in the oil.
- Matelote sauceNot given here, and not something you will buy. It is a red-wine fish sauce, in the classic form fish stock and red wine reduced, thickened with beurre manié or a brown roux and garnished with small onions and mushrooms. Make it first and hold it warm; it will not come together while fillets are draining.
- DonenessFillets of ordinary thickness need about three to four minutes. Pike is lean and turns cottony fast; take it out when the flesh is just opaque at the thickest point, around 145F.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than on paper. Fillets set down on paper steam underneath and the crust you just built goes soft before the dish reaches the table.
- If you cannot get pikeWalleye and perch behave much the same way and carry no Y-bones. Any firm, lean white fillet will take the crumb coating and the red-wine sauce.
- YieldA pike of 3 to 4 lb gives two fillets and serves four as a course. Allow roughly 6 oz of trimmed fillet per person and about a cup of sauce for four.
Oscar Tschirky was never the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel, the public face of the dining rooms — but the cookbook that carries his name, published in 1896, gathered the hotel's working repertoire, and this is a European kitchen's fish course transplanted to Fifth Avenue. Pike was a far more familiar fish in nineteenth-century America than it is now, taken from northern lakes and rivers and prized in the German and French traditions that staffed the great hotel kitchens; its notorious bones are the reason so many classic pike preparations either fillet it carefully, as here, or pound it into quenelles. The matelote is the older half of the dish: the name comes from the French for a sailor's or boatman's stew, a freshwater fish braise in red wine with onions and mushrooms, and by Oscar's day the reduced wine sauce had been detached from the stew and pressed into service as a garnish on its own.