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Fried Perch
Scale, clean and wash the perch, dry them thoroughly and flour them. Put some dripping in a fryingpan and when boiling put the fish in, fry till nicely browned on both sides. Place them on a folded napkin or ornamental dish paper on a hot dish, garnish with fried parsley, and serve with a sauceboatful of butter sauce.
Perch, German Style Scale and clean two moderately large perch and put them in a stewpan. Finely mince the red part of two carrots, some roots of parsley and celery, put them in the stewpan with the fish, with a bunch of parsley, one onion and a little salt, cover the perch with white wine and let them boil over a moderate fire for twenty minutes. Take the fish out when cooked, drain and place them on a hot dish. Take the bunch of parsley and onions out of the stewpan, then put in with the vegetables some finely minced raw mushrooms, and cook them for five minutes; then stir in a piece of butter kneaded with flour to thicken it; take the stewpan off the fire, put in some more butter, cut in small pieces, but not kneaded, add the strained juice of two lemons, pour it over the fish and serve.
Perch, Normandy Style Scale and clean the perch, put some chopped onions at the bottom of a flat stewpan and put in the perch, with a bunch of parsley, some trimmings of fresh mushrooms, a little salt and white wine to cover. When the liquid is boiling move the stewpan to the side of the fire and keep the contents simmering for fifteen minutes. Prepare a garnish with some quenelles, mushrooms, oysters, and mussels, reserving the liquor of the oysters and mushrooms. Drain the liquor off the fish through a fine hair sieve into a sautepan and boil it till reduced to half; then take the pan off the fire, thicken the sauce with kneaded butter, divided into small pieces, stirring all the time, then add a liaison of the yolks of three eggs. Put the perch on a hot dish, pour the sauce over it, put the prepared garnish round, glaze it under a salamander and serve.
Perch, Silesian Style Draw and clean two or three fine perch, but do not scale them. Put some water in a saucepan with a bunch of parsley, a little vinegar and salt and boil it; then plunge the perch into it and boil for twenty minutes. Make the following sauce: Put in a stewpan two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a few sprigs of parsley, a little tarragon, two chopped shallots, a bay leaf, and four or five peppercorns. Boil the liquid till reduced to half its original quantity. Leave it till cool, then mix with it a teacupful of melted glaze, the beaten yolks of six eggs, four ounces of butter and a little salt, stir the sauce over a very slow fire to thicken without letting it boil. Place the same in a bain-marie and whisk it, adding gradually some small pieces of butter. When frothy put in a teacupful of brown sauce and about two tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish. Remove the perch carefully with a skimmer, scrape the scales off, dip the fish in the cooking liquor, then wipe them in a cloth; put them in a hot dish, pour the prepared sauce over them, first mixing with it a little chopped parsley and a few capers and serve. Care must be taken to remove the scales quite cleanly or they will spoil the dish.
Four treatments of perch from Oscar's fish chapter, written for a brigade with a stove that had hot and cool zones and a pastry cook next door. The conversions are straightforward; the timings are the part that needs real attention.
- Cook the fish far less than it saysTwenty minutes of boiling will reduce a perch fillet or a small whole perch to cotton. Yellow perch of a half pound or so are done in 6-8 minutes in barely trembling liquid; a larger whole fish may take 10-12. Judge by the flesh parting cleanly from the backbone, not by the clock in the text.
- DrippingRendered beef or pork fat, a standard frying medium in a kitchen doing large-scale roasting. Clarified butter, lard, or a neutral oil all work; keep the pan around 350-360F so the flour crust browns before the fish overcooks.
- The egg-yolk sauces must not boilThe Normandy liaison thickens with yolks and the Silesian sauce is a butter emulsion; both are heat-sensitive. Yolks in a sauce begin to curdle somewhere around 180F, and the sauce breaks. Take the pan off direct heat before the yolks go in, and finish over a water bath as the Silesian version directs.
- Kneaded butterBeurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, whisked into hot liquid in small pieces to thicken it. Here it goes in off the boil, which is why the recipe also mounts plain butter in afterwards.
- Glaze and brown sauce'Melted glaze' is meat stock reduced to a syrup; the 'brown sauce' is most likely an espagnole. Reduced veal or beef stock, or a good demi-glace, stands in for both. A teacupful is usually reckoned at somewhere between 6 and 8 fluid ounces.
- SalamanderAn overhead radiant grill used to gloss and lightly brown a sauced dish. A domestic broiler set high, with the dish close to the element for under a minute, does the same job; watch it, as the egg-yolk sauce will blister.
- Quenelles and the Normandy garnishQuenelles are poached dumplings of pounded fish forcemeat bound with egg. The oysters and mussels are arranged round the dish as garnish, with their liquor reserved; cook them only until just done, as they toughen quickly.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into fat at about 350F for 10-15 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn a deep crisp green. Any water on the leaves will make the fat erupt, so dry them very well.
- YieldThe Silesian recipe calls for two or three 'fine' perch. The book gives no serving count; perch are small, so allow about two pan-sized fish per person.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and the fish chapter of his 1896 book reads as a survey of what a large American hotel kitchen was expected to be able to produce on request: the same humble lake fish dressed four ways, plain fried for a quick lunch, then in German, Normandy and Silesian styles for guests who wanted continental cooking. Yellow perch was a cheap and reliable fish, which may be why it gets this range of treatment rather than a single set-piece. The Silesian method poaches the fish with the scales left on, to be scraped away afterward, and Oscar closes with a warning to scrape cleanly. The sauce built on reduced vinegar, shallot, tarragon and yolks is recognizably the béarnaise family, here pushed toward horseradish and capers.