No. 1112

Striped Bass with Fine Herbs

Bass Raye aux Fines Herbes

Pare some boneless and skinless fillets of bass in the shape of half hearts; put them in a sautoir after buttering it well, and moisten them with wine and mushroom liquor; cover and put to cook in a slack oven; drain off the liquid, pour it into a sauteing pan with as much veloute sauce (No. 415); reduce well and finish by incorporating a large piece of butter and some lemon juice; taste to judge of its seasoning and add more accordingly. Strain this sauce through a tammy (No. 159), add some chopped blanched parsley and dress the fish in a circle or a straight row, then cover with the sauce and serve immediately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic shallow-poach and pan-sauce, written in the compressed professional shorthand of Ranhofer's kitchen. The whole dish turns on the cooking liquid, which becomes the sauce, so keep it small in volume and concentrated in flavour.

The hinge: mount the butter off the heatAfter reducing the poaching liquor with the velouté, add the final "large piece of butter" and the lemon juice with the pan off the burner, swirling it in in pieces. The flour in the velouté makes this sauce comparatively forgiving, but hard boiling after the butter goes in can still separate it and leave it tasting greasy.
A slack ovenA cool oven, conventionally reckoned somewhere in the region of 275-300F; the book itself gives no figures. The fish is not roasting; it is poaching gently under cover in a shallow bath of wine and mushroom liquor. Boneless fillets of about 6 oz should be done in roughly 8 to 12 minutes, when the flesh is just opaque and yields to slight pressure.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wide enough to hold the fillets in one layer without crowding. A modern sauté pan or a shallow flameproof baking dish does the same job; it needs a lid or a tight cover of buttered parchment.
Mushroom liquorThe strained cooking liquid from stewed or turned mushrooms, a standing byproduct of a nineteenth-century brigade. Substitute the liquid from mushrooms simmered briefly in a little water or stock, or well-strained soaking liquid from dried mushrooms, used sparingly so it does not dominate.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with white stock and simmered until clean-tasting. The recipe calls for "as much veloute sauce" as the strained cooking liquid, so roughly equal parts; the sauce should nap the fish, not blanket it.
TammyA woollen straining cloth through which sauce was forced with two people twisting the ends. A fine chinois lined with a doubled square of muslin gives the same result with less drama.
Blanched parsleyParsley dropped into boiling water for a few seconds, refreshed in cold water, squeezed dry and chopped. It keeps its green in the hot sauce and loses the raw edge. Add at the last moment.
Half heartsA trimming shape rather than a technique: the fillets are pared so that a row or ring of them sits neatly on the platter. Ranhofer does not describe the cut itself. Trim to even thickness so the pieces cook at the same rate.
YieldThe original gives none. Figure one 5 to 6 oz fillet per person, with about 1/4 cup of finished sauce each.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York across two separate periods, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working system set down in print, which is why the recipes cross-reference each other by number rather than repeating themselves. Aux fines herbes in this French-trained context means the finishing herb rather than a fixed blend; here it comes down to chopped parsley alone, folded into a butter-mounted velouté. The dish itself is a straightforward application of the shallow-poach, in which the fish's cooking liquid is never discarded but reduced into the sauce that dresses it. What makes it American is the fish: striped bass was abundant along the Atlantic coast and a fixture on New York menus, and Ranhofer devotes a long run of numbered recipes to it, treating a local market fish with the full apparatus of the Paris kitchen.