No. 1113

Striped Bass with White Wine—Baked

Bass Raye Gratine au Vin Blanc

Take off the fillets from a medium sized bass weighing about two pounds, remove the skin from these and lay each whole fillet on the dish intended for serving, and that can be placed in the oven; cover the fish with white wine, and strew over some onions cut in thin slices, sprigs of parsley, thyme, bay leaf, mushroom parings, salt, pepper, and a few small bits of butter. Cover with another dish of the same shape, only smaller and put it in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes; now drain off the liquid, reduce it with as much veloute sauce (No. 415), and when very well reduced, strain through a tammy (No. 159), and incorporate in two ounces of butter, working it thoroughly with a small wire whip. Pour this all over the fish to cover it entirely, strew the top with grated parmesan or fine bread-raspings, and let it attain a fine color in the hot oven or salamander (Fig. 123); serve as soon as it is browned.

← No. 1112 Striped Bass with Fine Herbs Bass, Blackfish & Bluefish No. 1114 Blackfish a la Orly →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a shallow oven-braise finished as a gratin: the fish poaches in wine, the wine becomes the sauce, and the sauce is glazed under high heat. Nothing here is difficult, but the timings and two of the components need translating.

The hinge: reduce hard, then mount off the heatThe hinge: reduce hard, then mount the butter -- The sauce is made by boiling the strained braising liquid with an equal amount of velouté until it is thick enough to coat, then whisking in the butter. Ranhofer does not say to move the pan off the heat, but adding the butter away from a hard boil keeps the finished sauce smoother under the broiler.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with white stock and simmered until clean-tasting; Ranhofer's is a veal or chicken stock sauce, though fish stock works here. The recipe calls for as much velouté as there is reduced braising liquid; a quick roux of 1 tbsp each butter and flour with 3/4 cup stock, simmered ten minutes, gives you enough.
Oven temperature and fish timingNo temperature is given; a moderate oven, around 350-375F, suits this stage. Fillets from a two-pound bass are thin, so Ranhofer's fifteen to twenty minutes may be more than they need; check at eight to ten minutes and pull the fish once it is barely opaque, since it goes back under high heat to brown.
The covered dishThe smaller inverted dish is an improvised lid that traps steam over a shallow pool of wine. Buttered parchment pressed to the surface, or foil, does the same thing in a gratin dish.
Wine quantityNo amount is given; the fish should be covered, which in a snug gratin dish means roughly a cup of dry white. A wide dish will swallow far more wine than the sauce needs, so choose one just large enough to hold the fillets in a single layer.
Mushroom paringsThe stems and peelings saved from other preparations in a professional kitchen, used purely for their savor. Two or three sliced whole mushrooms are a reasonable substitute.
Tammy (No. 159)A worsted straining cloth through which sauce was forced with two people twisting the ends. A fine chinois or a doubled sieve gives the same smoothness with less drama.
Bread-raspings and the salamanderRaspings are the dry crumbs scraped from the crust of stale loaves, finer and drier than fresh breadcrumbs. The salamander was a heated iron plate held above the dish; a broiler set high, with the dish two or three inches beneath it, browns the glaze in a minute or two, and it needs watching.
YieldTwo fillets from a two-pound fish serve two as a main course, or four as a course in a longer menu of the sort this book assumes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in more than thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and it is fundamentally a French book about American ingredients. Striped bass was the prestige fish of the Atlantic seaboard, netted and hooked around New York and Long Island in quantity that is hard to imagine now, and Ranhofer gives it a page after page of treatments borrowed straight from the classic repertoire. Gratiné au vin blanc is one of the oldest of them: fish braised in white wine, the liquor bound with a velouté and mounted with butter, then glazed. The technique long predates Ranhofer and survives in Escoffier as the sauce vin blanc family. What dates the entry precisely is the equipment: the tammy cloth and the salamander iron both belong to a kitchen with more hands than heat sources, where finishing a dish meant carrying fire to the food rather than the other way around.