No. 1100

Sea Bass with Almond Butter

Bass de Mer au Beurre d'Amandes

Remove the fillets from the fish; season them with salt and pepper, saturate with oil, and broil over a slow fire without browing; dress and surround the fillets with potato balls three-quarters of an inch in diameter, first boiled, then sauted in butter. Cover the surface of the fish with slightly melted almond butter (No. 568), and besprinkle the potatoes with finely chopped parsley.

← No. 1099 Sea Bass a la Villeroi Bass, Blackfish & Bluefish No. 1101 Striped or Rock Bass a la Bercy →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain broiled fillet whose whole character comes from the compound butter poured over it at the last moment. Ranhofer assumes you have the almond butter (No. 568) already made and the potato balls already turned, so read those two steps first.

Almond butter (No. 568)Ranhofer's version is a compound butter: blanched sweet almonds pounded to a paste and worked into butter. It is not the roasted nut spread sold under that name today, and it is not beurre noisette. Check No. 568 for his proportions before starting.
"Slightly melted"The butter should be softened only to the point where it will pour, no warmer. Take it further and it separates into oil and milky sediment, and the almond paste sinks.
"Broil over a slow fire without browning"This is the hinge. Ranhofer wants the fillets cooked through but left pale, so the almond butter is the only colour on the plate. Use moderate rather than fierce heat, well below a modern broiler's full setting, and turn once. A half-inch fillet takes roughly 3 to 4 minutes a side.
DonenessMany modern cooks pull sea bass at around 130-135F at the thickest point, when the flesh has just lost its translucence, though 145F is the usual recommended figure. The period habit of cooking fish until it flakes freely overshoots either mark.
"Saturate with oil"The recipe does not say which; olive oil is the likely intent. It is there to keep the fillet from sticking and drying rather than to flavour it. Oiling the grill bars as well helps.
Potato ballsCut with a parisienne scoop three-quarters of an inch across, from a firm waxy potato. Boil only until a knife just enters, drain and dry thoroughly, then colour them in butter — they will not brown if they go into the pan wet.
"Dress"In this book dress means to arrange on the serving dish, not to sauce. The fillets go down the centre, the potatoes in a border around them.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Two fillets will serve two as a main, or more as one course in a longer menu of the kind he was writing for.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its fish chapters run to many treatments each of black sea bass, striped bass, blackfish and bluefish. The almond butter belongs to the French repertory of beurres composés — butters worked with an aromatic and held cold until service — which let a kitchen finish a plainly grilled fillet at speed without a sauce cook standing over a pan. Almonds had long been used in European cookery as a Lenten and fast-day device, since almond milk and almond pastes stood in where dairy and meat were not permitted; here the butter survives for its richness and its pale colour against the uncoloured fish.