No. 1122

Bonito or Tunny Fish a la Godivier

Bonite ou Thon a la Godivier

Raise the fillets from a young bonito or tunny fish after having washed and cleansed it well; place it in a buttered sautoir and moisten to its height with a mirepoix stock (No. 419). Cover with heavy buttered paper, let boil, and finish cooking in a slack oven. Fry one shallot in butter, dilute it with some of the fish stock and the same quantity of espagnole sauce (No. 414); after the sauce is well reduced mix in with it a little tomato sauce (No. 549), a little crushed garlic and some chopped parsley. Dress the bonito, lift off its skin and pour the sauce over.

← No. 1121 Bluefish with Mayonnaise and Tarragon Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1123 Bouillabaisse Marengo →

For the Modern Kitchen

A braise, not a poach: the fillets sit in shallow mirepoix stock, are covered with buttered paper, and finish in a low oven. Ranhofer assumes you already have three of his mother sauces on hand, which is where most of the work actually lies.

Sautoir and paper lidA sautoir is a straight-sided saute pan; any wide, shallow pan that holds the fillets in one layer will do. The buttered paper is a cartouche laid directly on the surface — parchment cut to fit does the same job of holding moisture in without sealing the pan.
Slack ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; a slack or cool oven is usually taken to mean somewhere around 275-300F. The stock should barely tremble; brought to the boil on the stove first, the fish then coasts to done in the oven.
Mirepoix stock (No. 419)Ranhofer's mirepoix is a base of diced root vegetables and onion with ham or bacon sweated in butter with herbs, moistened with wine and stock. A well-made fish fumet with white wine and a handful of aromatic vegetables stands in for it honestly.
Espagnole and tomato sauceEspagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce: brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix, reduced and skimmed over hours. A good reduced veal or beef demi-glace is the practical substitute; the tomato sauce (No. 549) is a cooked, sieved sauce, not raw puree and not ketchup.
Cooking timeThe original gives none. Tuna and bonito fillets an inch thick are done in roughly 12-15 minutes at 300F, and they dry out fast past that point. Pull them when the centre is still translucent and just warm; the flesh of these fish turns chalky when fully cooked.
SkinLeaving the skin on through cooking holds the fillet together in the braising liquid; it peels away cleanly while the fish is hot, just before saucing.
The fish itselfBonito and tunny were loosely applied names in the period. Skipjack, albacore or bonito all suit this treatment; a strongly flavoured, dark-fleshed fish is the point, and the garlic, tomato and parsley are pitched to match it. Bluefin is best avoided on stock grounds.
YieldA young bonito yields two fillets, enough for about four as a main course. The sauce should be reduced to a coating consistency and poured over the dressed fish rather than served in a pool.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the entire repertoire of that restaurant in one volume — hence the cross-references to numbered stocks and sauces rather than repeated instructions. "A la Godivier" is an oddity: godiveau is the classic French veal-and-suet forcemeat, and dishes named for it usually involve that stuffing, which this one does not; the name may simply have travelled with a garnish long since detached from it. What the recipe does show plainly is how a cheap, dark-fleshed fish was made respectable in a nineteenth-century luxury kitchen — braised in an aromatic stock, skinned so the grey flesh under the skin never reaches the plate, then masked with a brown sauce sharpened by tomato and garlic. Tuna and bonito were abundant and inexpensive on the American Atlantic coast then, and canned tuna did not yet exist as an industry; a chef who could dress them like this was turning a common fish into a course.