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Fried Fillets of Sheepshead
Remove the fillets and dip them in salted milk, and roll them in flour and then in egg and fresh breadcrumbs, and fry them in hot fat. Arrange them on a napkin on a hot dish, overlapping one another, and serve them with Bearnaise, Mayonnaise or Tartare sauce.
A plain breaded fry that depends almost entirely on fat temperature and on the fish being dry before it goes into the flour. Everything else is assembly.
- The fish"Sheepshead" in New York at the turn of the century usually meant Archosargus probatocephalus, the striped Atlantic porgy relative, though in the Great Lakes trade the name attached to freshwater drum. Either way it is a firm, mild, white-fleshed panfish: black sea bass, porgy, snapper, or striped bass fillets all behave the same way here.
- Salted milkNo proportion is given. About a teaspoon of salt to a cup of milk is enough to season the flesh; a brief dip is all that is meant, not a soak. Let the fillets drain a moment before flouring or the coating turns to paste.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat." Modern practice for breaded fish puts it at roughly 350-375F. Below that the crumbs absorb grease before they set; above it they colour before thin fillets are cooked through.
- TimingTwo to three minutes a side for fillets under half an inch, and the fish is done when the flesh turns opaque and flakes at the thickest point. Cook to 145F if you want a number. Fried fish held in the pan "to be sure" is the usual way this dish is ruined.
- Crumbs"Fresh breadcrumbs" here means soft crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried or packaged crumbs, and certainly not panko. They give a finer, paler crust than dried crumbs and burn more readily, which is another argument for the lower end of the fat range.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin on the platter was a common convention in hotel service for fried food: it absorbs fat and keeps the pieces from sliding. A wire rack over a warm plate does the same job if you would rather not oil your linen.
- The saucesBéarnaise, mayonnaise and tartare are all raw- or barely-cooked-egg emulsions in their classical form. Made fresh and served at once with fried fish this is ordinary practice, but use pasteurised eggs if you are serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- YieldOscar assumes a kitchen working to order. Reckon two fillets, or six to eight ounces of trimmed fish, per person as a main course.
Sheepshead was a common sight in American markets in the nineteenth century — the Brooklyn racetrack and the bay beside it are traditionally said to take their name from it — and it appears in Oscar Tschirky's book as one of a long run of workmanlike fish entries meant to show a hotel cook how to handle whatever the market sent up that morning. The method itself is the standard à l'anglaise breading of the French professional kitchen, flour then egg then crumb, which Oscar would have seen in the kitchens of the houses he served in as a front-of-house man — busboy, then private-dining-room captain at Delmonico's, later maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf; the flourish that marks it as hotel rather than home cooking is the instruction to overlap the fillets on a napkin, a presentation convention for fried food that survived in American dining rooms well into the twentieth century. The three sauces offered are also telling: béarnaise to be made hot to order, mayonnaise and tartare prepared cold and in advance.