No. 1125

Buffalo Fish a la Bavaroise

Scale and dress two Buffalo fish; raise the fillets without removing the skin; season and dip them in flour. Melt some butter in a pan pouring off the top while hot, put the fish into the pan, and fry very slowly, turning the pieces over when done; drain and dress them on a dish; put some melted butter into that already in the pan, cook it to hazelnut butter (No. 567) and take it from the hot fire; pour in a spoonful of cooked vinegar and a pinch of chopped parsley and chives, pour this butter over the fried fillets and serve.

← No. 1124 Parisian Bouillabaisse Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1126 Buffalo Fish, Cream Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A plain pan-fry finished with brown butter, and the finish is where the whole dish lives or dies. Ranhofer assumes you know what clarified butter and beurre noisette are; everything else is straightforward.

The hinge: the butterBeurre noisette goes from nutty amber to acrid black in a matter of seconds. Pull the pan off the heat the moment the milk solids smell like toasted hazelnuts and look tan, then add the vinegar off-heat, which stops the browning and steams off harshly.
"Pouring off the top while hot"Read as a clarifying step: melt the butter gently and separate the clear fat from the milky residue, the recipe's wording pointing to what rises to the top. Clarified butter or ghee from a jar does much the same job and is less likely to scorch during a slow fry.
Buffalo fishIctiobus, a large freshwater sucker from the Mississippi basin, still sold in some Southern and Midwestern markets but rare elsewhere. Carp, freshwater drum, sheepshead or a firm catfish fillet all behave the same way in the pan. Buffalo is a bony fish; a fillet knife and a pass with tweezers are worth the trouble.
Skin onLeaving the skin means the fillet holds together. Score it two or three times so it does not buckle, start skin side down, and press briefly with a spatula.
"Fry very slowly"Medium-low, not medium-high, so the flour crust dries and colors without the butter darkening. Figure roughly 4 to 6 minutes on the skin side and 2 to 3 after turning for a fillet of about an inch; cook until the flesh flakes throughout, about 145F.
"Cooked vinegar"Read as vinegar that has been boiled, and usually reduced, before use; a good white wine vinegar simmered by half gives the same softened acidity. A spoonful is about a tablespoon for two fish, added to the butter off the heat.
Chives and parsleyBoth go in raw at the very end. Cooking them in the butter turns the parsley bitter and flattens the onion note the chives are there to provide.
YieldTwo dressed fish yield four fillets. The recipe gives no yield; allow about 6 oz of fillet per person as a main.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and one of the book's quiet pleasures is watching French technique applied to whatever the American market actually delivered. Buffalo fish was a commercial freshwater catch, cheap and abundant and nobody's idea of luxury; here it gets the same brown-butter treatment a Parisian kitchen would give a sole. The formula -- fried in butter, finished with browned butter and vinegar and herbs -- is a close cousin to à la meunière, and the name may nod to the Central European habit of serving freshwater fish, carp especially, with nut-brown butter; what Ranhofer meant by à la Bavaroise here is not otherwise documented. Ranhofer's cross-reference to No. 567 for the hazelnut butter is characteristic of the book, which is built as a system of numbered preparations rather than a set of standalone recipes.