No. 1161

Frost Fish or Whiting Baked

Tacaud ou Merlan Gratine

Make incisions on both sides of the fish and season. Butter the bottom of a baking dish, sprinkle over with finely chopped onions and mushrooms, and on this bottom range the fish, pressing them down all on the same side; cover over with more chopped onions and mushrooms and besprinkle with bread-crumbs, pour over melted butter and cook in a moderate oven, basting them at times. Take out the dish, put a gill of half-glaze sauce (No. 413) reduced with white wine into the bottom, return to the oven to cook for ten minutes longer, when ready to serve squeeze over the juice of a lemon, bestrew chopped parsley over the top and serve in the same dish they were cooked in.

← No. 1160 Frostfish or Whiting, Fried Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1162 Grouper a la Franklyn →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward gratin of small whole fish, from Ranhofer's 1894 The Epicurean. The only real obstacle is the cross-reference to a sauce that takes a day to build.

A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is the quantity of half-glaze sauce added part-way through the bake.
Half-glaze (No. 413)Ranhofer's demi-glace: espagnole reduced with stock until it coats. A good commercial demi-glace, or reduced brown veal stock, does the job. Reduce it with a splash of dry white wine before it goes in the dish, as directed.
Moderate oven350F. The fish are thin and the topping needs to colour, so 375F is defensible if the crumbs are lagging.
The fishFrost fish here is the Atlantic tomcod; whiting on an American counter today usually means silver hake. Any small whole white fish of 6-10 oz works, or fillets of cod or haddock, skin on.
TimingWhole fish of this size are done in 15-18 minutes at 350F, plus the ten minutes after the sauce goes in. Judge by the flesh parting cleanly from the backbone rather than by the clock; overcooked hake collapses into shreds.
Pressing them down all on the same sideThe text does not explain the phrase; the likeliest reading is that the fish are laid so they all rest on the same flank, arranged uniformly so the dish can go to table as it is. Use a dish you are willing to serve from.
The duxelles bedChop the onion and mushroom fine and cook out some of their water in the butter first if you want the sauce to stay glossy. Raw mushrooms release a good deal of liquid into what should be a concentrated gratin.
YieldOne small whole fish per person; two to four fish fit a standard gratin dish. As written this serves two to four as a main course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as both a menu archive and a working manual, which is why nearly every recipe leans on numbered cross-references to foundation sauces. The French title here, tacaud ou merlan gratiné, pairs the European pouting and whiting with their nearest American market equivalents, a habit that runs through the book: Ranhofer was translating a Parisian repertoire onto New York fish stalls. The method itself is the classic gratin treatment of a small fish, laid on a bed of chopped onion and mushroom of the sort long known as duxelles, a preparation established in French cookery well before Ranhofer's day. Tomcod and whiting were cheap, abundant and small enough that filleting was not worth the trouble. Serving in the cooking dish is part of the point of a gratin.