No. 1099

Sea Bass a la Villeroi

Bass de Mer a la Villeroi

Remove the fillets, bones, and skin from a sea bass; pare the fillets into half-heart shapes and season each piece with salt and pepper; saute these in butter with lemon juice, and take them out singly to place on a baking sheet; set a light weight on top; when cold pare them exactly alike and cover over with a well reduced allemande sauce (No. 407) and a little jelly, into which has been added finely chopped mushrooms and parsley; let get very cold, then bread-crumb them by rolling them first in bread-crumbs, afterward in beaten eggs, and once more in the bread-crumbs; smooth the surfaces with the blade of a knife, and lay them at the bottom of a wire basket; plunge it in very hot frying fat, taking them out when a fine color; dress on napkins and serve with fried parsley as a garnishing.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's à la Villeroi is a two-day proposition: cook the fish, coat it in a sauce stiff enough to set solid, then crumb and deep-fry. The whole method hinges on the coating being refrigerator-cold and firm before it goes near the fat.

The hinge: a truly set coatingThe allemande must be reduced until a spoonful holds its shape on a cold plate, and the coated fillets must chill several hours until the sauce is rigid. Warm or soft sauce splits in the fryer and the fillets come out naked in a cloud of grease.
Allemande sauce (No. 407)A velouté — white stock thickened with roux — finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and lemon. Any well-reduced velouté or thick béchamel enriched with yolks will behave the same way. The "little jelly" is aspic or reduced fish glaze, added purely to help the coating set; a teaspoon of bloomed gelatin per cup of sauce does the same job.
The weightPressing under a light weight while cooling compacts the flakes so the fillet can be pared to a clean shape and survives handling. A second sheet pan with a can on it is sufficient; heavy pressure squeezes the fish dry.
Breading orderCrumbs, then egg, then crumbs again, exactly as written. The first dusting of crumbs gives the egg something to grip on a slick sauce surface; skipping it is the usual reason the crust slides off.
Frying fat and temperatureThe book says only "very hot" and gives no time or temperature; in practice that means fat hot enough to color the crumbs quickly, around 375F. Cooler, and the sauce melts before the crust colors; hotter, and the crumbs darken before the inside is warmed through. Take them out, as the recipe says, at a fine color.
Fried parsleyDry sprigs, dropped into the same fat for about 15 seconds until they stop hissing. Wet parsley will spatter violently.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set in type. À la Villeroi is a classical French preparation — generally traced to the Villeroy family of the French court, though the connection is traditional rather than documented — and its logic is thoroughly professional: cook, cool, coat, chill, crumb, and hold, so that orders can be dropped into fat and plated quickly. The technique was applied widely in nineteenth-century kitchens, to sweetbreads, lamb cutlets, chicken and fish alike, always with a stiff velouté-based sauce standing in for a batter. Sea bass appears here in a section shared with blackfish and bluefish, all common fish of the New York market.