No. 1158

Flounders, Provencal Style

Plies Carrelets ou Limandes a la Provencale

First lift off the fillets from the flounders, and season them with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, beat to flatten with the handle of a knife, then fold in two; trim the pointed edge of each with a crawfish claw, after removing the movable small end attached to it; range the fillets in a buttered sautoir, moisten with mushroom liquor and white wine, seasoning with salt and pepper; cover over with buttered paper, and leave to cook. Reduce some provencale sauce (No. 529), prepared with veloute sauce (No. 415) and the fish stock, and when well reduced incorporate in a small piece of maitre-d'hotel butter (No. 581). Dress the fillets either in a circle or a straight row, and cover over with a part of the prepared sauce. Decorate every one of the claws with a fancy frill, and serve with the remainder of the sauce separately. The fish can be surrounded by small stuffed halved tomatoes (No. 2835).

← No. 1157 Flounders a la Madeleine Sole, Flounder & Turbot No. 1159 Frostfish or Whiting, Cherbourg Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stocks and sauces already on the stove; the dish itself is a straightforward shallow-poached fillet with a tomato-garlic sauce. The cross-references are the work, not the fish.

The hinge: cook the fillets gently and brieflyFolded flounder fillets in a little wine and mushroom liquor, covered with buttered paper, need roughly 5 to 8 minutes at a bare simmer or in a 350F oven. "Leave to cook" in the original assumed a cook watching the pan; flounder is thin and turns cottony within a minute of being done.
Sautoir and buttered paperA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan — a wide skillet or saute pan works. The buttered paper is a cartouche: parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered side down on the fish, which traps steam without sealing the pan like a lid.
Provencale sauce, in shortIn the classical vocabulary a provencale sauce is built on tomato, garlic and oil with herbs; here the recipe directs that No. 529 be made up with velouté (No. 415) and the fish stock, so check both numbers for Ranhofer's own proportions. Practically: sweat garlic in oil, add chopped peeled tomato, reduce hard, then whisk in a roughly equal amount of velouté made with the fish poaching liquid and reduce again.
Maitre-d'hotel butterNo. 581 is butter mashed with lemon juice, chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Whisked in off the heat at the last moment it gloss the sauce; if it boils after that the emulsion breaks.
Mushroom liquorThe strained liquid from cooking mushrooms, a standing item in a professional kitchen of the 1890s. Substitute the soaking liquid from dried mushrooms, or simmer a handful of sliced button mushrooms in water for ten minutes and strain.
The crawfish clawsPurely decorative: a cooked claw is pushed into the pointed end of each folded fillet so it appears to sprout from it, then dressed with a paper frill. Skip both and nothing is lost but the 1890s table theatre.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Figure two fillets per person; depending on the size of the fish and whether each side is cut as one fillet or two, that is roughly two to four flounder for four people, with the halved stuffed tomatoes as the garnish ring.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized as a professional reference rather than a household book: nearly every recipe leans on numbered sauces, stocks and garnishes elsewhere in the volume. "A la provencale" in this classical French vocabulary signals tomato and garlic, the two ingredients associated with the south of France, and by Ranhofer's day the label was applied freely to fish, eggs and meat alike. The dish also shows the period's habit of dressing plain flatfish for the dining room — folded fillets arranged in a ring, a crawfish claw stuck in each one and finished with a paper frill, a convention that survived in hotel kitchens well into the twentieth century. Flounder, plaice and dab (the plies, carrelets ou limandes of the title) were treated as interchangeable substitutes for Dover sole.