No. 1106

Striped Bass a la Massena—Whole

Bass Raye a la Massena--Entier

Fry colorless in butter, two ounces of onions cut in one-eighth of an inch squares, as much carrots cut the same, as much minced mushrooms, one bay leaf, the same quantity of thyme and parsley leaves, moistening with white wine and broth, half and half; cook together for twenty minutes and let get cold. Clean and dress a bass of six pounds, place it in the fish kettle, and pour over the prepared court-bouillon; boil and skim the liquid when required, then remove it from the hot fire and continue boiling slowly for forty-five minutes, drain, and strain the stock, and add part of this to an allemande sauce (No. 407), reduce the two together. When ready to serve dress the bass, glaze it with fish glaze (No. 399), mingled with lobster butter (No. 580), garnish around with sauted mushrooms and lobster escalops sauted with fine herbs. Incorporate into the sauce a large piece of lobster butter, pour two-thirds over the lobster and mushrooms, surround these with oysters a la villeroi (No. 698), and serve the rest of the sauce in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 1105 Striped Bass a la Maintenon Bass, Blackfish & Bluefish No. 1107 Striped Bass a la Mornay →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full Delmonico's production: a whole poached bass, glazed, sauced, and ringed with fried oysters. Ranhofer assumes you have his stock recipes on hand, and his cooking time assumes a fish that will be handled a great deal after it leaves the kettle.

The cooking time is the hingeForty-five minutes of slow cooking risks overshooting a six-pound bass, though it is not as far from modern timing as it first looks. Modern practice poaches whole fish at a bare shiver, 160-175F, for roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, and pulls it at 130-135F internal. Ranhofer's "boil" is best taken as the liquid coming up before the kettle is drawn off the fire; his "boiling slowly" thereafter should be no more than a tremble.
Fish kettleA long oval pan with a perforated lifting rack, which is what lets a whole fish come out intact. A deep roasting pan works if you cradle the fish in doubled cheesecloth and use the ends as handles.
The court-bouillonWhat he builds first is a vegetable and wine cooking liquid, not a stock in the reduced sense. Two ounces each of onion, carrot and mushroom is about a third of a cup diced; the wine and broth need only cover the fish by an inch or so in the kettle, which for a six-pound fish will be several quarts.
Allemande sauceHis No. 407: a velouté thickened further with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and sharpened with lemon. It must not boil after the yolks go in. Once you reduce it with the fish liquor, keep it below a simmer or it will break.
Fish glaze and lobster butterGlace de poisson is fish stock reduced to a syrupy, tacky concentrate that sets to a shine when brushed on. Lobster butter is butter worked with pounded lobster shells and coral, then strained; it supplies most of the colour and all of the perfume in this dish.
Escalops and oysters a la VilleroiEscalops are neat medallions cut from the lobster tail. Oysters a la Villeroi are poached, coated in a stiff sauce, chilled until firm, then breaded and deep-fried, so they need to be started well ahead and fried at the last minute.
The fish itselfWild striped bass is subject to size and season limits in many places, and commercial sale is restricted in some US states. Farmed hybrid striped bass is widely sold but rarely reaches six pounds, so a whole wild-caught fish from a licensed fishmonger is the closest match; black sea bass is a reasonable substitute in flavour, but most market fish are far smaller than six pounds.
YieldA six-pound fish with lobster, oysters and mushrooms serves ten to twelve as a course in a longer meal.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire, some twelve hundred pages of it, in the classical French manner. The garnish name honours André Masséna, Marshal of France and Prince of Essling under Napoleon, one of a great many nineteenth-century dishes christened after military and court figures; the naming was a convention of the grande cuisine rather than any claim about what the man ate. Striped bass was the natural fish for such treatment in New York: it ran in enormous numbers in the Hudson and around Long Island through the nineteenth century and arrived at market whole and large, which suited a kitchen that liked to send a garnished fish to the table on a silver platter. The lobster butter, lobster escalops and fried oysters piled around it are period logic at work, where a dish gained standing by how much sea it could assemble in one dish.