No. 1103

Striped Bass a la Laguipierre

Bass Raye a la Laguipierre

Lift off the fillets from several bass, three-quarters of a pound each; suppress the skin and beat them down with the handle of a knife, fold them in two in the center, and trim them half heart-shaped, then lay them in a buttered sautoir and moisten with a good court bouillon (No. 38). Prepare small pike quenelles (No. 90), some oysters or mussels and mushrooms; have a veloute sauce (No. 415), reduced with some of the court bouillon and thickened with egg-yolks and cream; strain through a sieve and keep half of it aside; to the other half add the quenelles, mushrooms and oysters. Dress the well-drained fish crown-shaped, fill the center with the stew, and cover the fish with half of the remaining sauce, sending the other half to the table in a sauce-boat. Do not garnish the fish with potatoes, when the sauce is poured over it, serve them separately.

← No. 1102 Striped Bass a la Conti Bass, Blackfish & Bluefish No. 1104 Striped Bass a la Long Branch →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has court bouillon, velouté and quenelle forcemeat standing by; the work here is assembly and timing rather than technique. Two things govern the result: the fish must poach below a simmer, and the finished sauce must never boil once the yolks go in.

The hinge: the liaisonA velouté thickened with egg yolks and cream will curdle if it returns to a boil. Add the yolk-and-cream mixture off the heat, then bring it back only to about 180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon.
Poaching temperature"Moisten with a good court bouillon" means barely cover the folded fillets and hold the liquid below a simmer, with the surface trembling rather than bubbling. The three-quarters of a pound is the weight of each whole bass, not of the fillet, so these are small folded pieces and will need only a few minutes; pull them while still just translucent at the thickest fold.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a sauté pan with sloping sides. Any wide, low-sided saucepan or a deep skillet with a lid works; butter it well, since the fish is meant to lift out whole.
"Suppress the skin"Ranhofer's French-inflected English for remove it. "Beat them down with the handle of a knife" means to flatten the fillet lightly so it folds without cracking - the flat of a cleaver or a small mallet does the same job.
Oysters and musselsThey go into the sauce at the very end, warmed through only. Shucked oysters need about a minute in hot sauce; longer cooking turns them to rubber. Mussels should be steamed open separately and shelled before they join the stew.
Cross-referencesNo. 38 is the court bouillon, No. 90 the pike quenelle forcemeat, No. 415 the velouté. Pike is hard to source; a fine pike-perch, whiting or even a panade-bound bass forcemeat gives the same light, poached dumpling. Poach the quenelles separately in salted water at 170F until they float and firm.
Reducing the sauceStrain some of the poaching court bouillon, reduce it hard, and use it to loosen and flavour the velouté. Straining the finished sauce through a fine sieve or chinois before dividing it is not optional if you want the glossy surface the dish is built around.
Yield and serviceThe recipe fixes no number of portions; from bass of three-quarters of a pound each, expect two small fillets per fish and allow one and a half to two per person. The crown arrangement wants a warm round platter, the garnish stew heaped in the middle, and the reserved sauce genuinely hot in the boat, since the fish cools fast.

A Little History

The dish honours Laguipierre, a celebrated chef of the Napoleonic period -- he is usually recorded as cook to Murat, and is often described as having served Napoleon -- and Carême, who regarded him as a master, wrote of him admiringly and reported that he died in the course of the retreat from Moscow in 1812. Naming garnishes and preparations after chefs, patrons and places was standard practice in the nineteenth-century repertoire, and Charles Ranhofer - Delmonico's chef from 1862 - carried that habit wholesale into The Epicurean (1894), fitting American fish to French formulas. Striped bass was among the most prized fish in New York's markets, and it appears in a long run of numbered preparations in this section; the treatment here is pure classical construction: a poached fillet, a velouté finished with a yolk liaison, and a ragout of quenelles, mushrooms and oysters in the well of the crown. The closing instruction about potatoes reads as a service note - a sauced fish was not to be crowded on the platter.