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Fried Halibut Steaks
Cut some steaks from a halibut, place them in a fryingpan with a small quantity of butter and fry until done. Put them on a dish and serve with Robert sauce poured round, but not on, the fish.
Broiled Fresh Herrings, Maitre d'Hotel Slice the herring down the stomach and take out the insides and the bones; pour over a little olive oil and sprinkle with chopped parsley, and let remain for an hour. Put them on a gridiron over the fire and broil until done. Put them on a dish with a few lumps of cold maitre d'hotel butter and serve. Broiled Fresh Herring with Mustard Sauce Take the required number of herring with soft roes, cut off the heads and clean, but do not open them; dip them well in salad oil, season with pepper and salt and leave them for an hour. Arrange the fish on a gridiron and let them stand over a clear, slow fire and broil for fifteen minutes, turning until they are done. Mix one teaspoonful of flour and one tablespoonful of mustard with cold water; when smooth pour in one breakfast cupful of white stock; turn this in a saucepan and stir over the fire until thick and it boils, then put in one ounce of butter, one teaspoonful of chopped parsley and pepper and salt to taste. Put the herrings on a hot dish, and when the butter is dissolved pour it over the fish and serve.
Three short fish preparations run together in one entry, in the telegraphic style Oscar used for cooks who already knew the sauces by name. The sauces are the work; the fish is minutes.
- The hinge: halibut is leanHalibut steaks 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick need roughly 4 minutes a side in foaming butter over medium-high heat, to an internal 130-135F. "Fry until done" probably implied a firmer, drier piece than modern taste prefers; at that stage halibut is chalky, so pull it while the centre is still just translucent.
- Robert sauceNot a bottled product. Robert is a brown sauce of onions sweated in butter, deglazed with white wine, finished with demi-glace and mustard. The recipe assumes it is already to hand; making it from scratch takes longer than the fish and needs a good brown stock.
- Maitre d'hotel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled. The "lumps of cold" butter are the point: they must go on hot fish and melt at the table, not be melted in advance.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. Treat it as one standard cup of stock for the mustard sauce and adjust the thickness afterward.
- White stock and the mustard sauceWhite stock is unroasted veal or chicken stock; unsalted chicken stock stands in. One tablespoon of mustard to one cup of stock is assertive, which is what herring wants. Whether "one tablespoonful of mustard" means prepared mustard or dry powder is unclear -- mixing it with flour and cold water until smooth suggests powder, though a full tablespoon of powder would be very sharp; start with less and taste.
- Gridiron over a clear, slow fireA clear fire is charcoal or wood burnt down past flame. On a gas grill, medium; under a broiler, one rack below the top. Fifteen minutes suits whole herring with the roe left in, about 8-10 inches long; butterflied herring in the first version is done in 3 to 4 minutes a side.
- Soft roesThe milt of male herring, sold as soft roe where it is sold at all. Leaving the fish unopened keeps it in place and bastes the flesh from the inside. Whole fresh herring is now a fishmonger order in much of the country; fresh sardines or mackerel behave the same way on a grill.
- Oiling and standingThe hour in oil with parsley or seasoning is a dry marinade, meant to keep the skin from sticking to the bars and to season through. Blot the surface oil off before the fish goes over the fire or it will flare.
- YieldFigure one 6-8 oz halibut steak or one whole herring per person; the mustard sauce as written dresses four to six fish.
Halibut and herring sat at opposite ends of the Waldorf's fish list. Halibut was a prestige white fish shipped on ice to city markets, cut into steaks because the fish is far too large to serve whole; sauce Robert, one of the older named brown sauces of the French repertoire and generally traced in print to the sixteenth century, gave it the weight the kitchen wanted. Herring was the cheap, oily, fast-spoiling fish of the North Atlantic, and it appears here in fresh form rather than salted or kippered. That Oscar Tschirky pairs it with maitre d'hotel butter and a mustard sauce follows old practice: mustard and acid have long been the standard foil for oily fish, and the two sauces do the same job by different routes.