No. 1164

Haddock, Ancient Style

Aiglefin a l'Ancienne

Cut the fish across in sufficiently thick slices to part each joint of the spinal bone; cook them in boiling, salted water, to which has been added branches of parsley, sliced onions, and vinegar; when the fish is done, drain, and remove the bones and skin, and lay the slices on a buttered dish, cover over with veloute sauce (No. 415) containing cooked fine herbs (No. 385); besprinkle with bread-crumbs, and grated parmesan, and brown the surface nicely in the oven. Serve a veloute sauce separately having it well buttered.

← No. 1163 Gudgeons or Whitebait Fried in Butter Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1165 Haddock, Holland Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward gratin of poached haddock under fish velouté, written in the shorthand Ranhofer used throughout The Epicurean: half the recipe lives in cross-references. Here is what those numbers stand for and where the dish can go wrong.

The hinge: poach, never boilThe instruction says boiling salted water, but haddock held at a rolling boil will shed its flakes and turn cottony before the centre is set. Bring the liquid to a boil, add the fish, then drop it to a bare shiver at around 175-180F and hold it there.
How thick the slices should be"To part each joint of the spinal bone" means cutting between vertebrae, which on a market haddock gives steaks of roughly 1 to 1 1/2 inches. Figure 8-10 minutes at a bare simmer; the flesh should just release from the bone when nudged.
The cooking liquidSalted water with parsley stems, sliced onion and vinegar is a short court bouillon. About a tablespoon of vinegar per quart is enough to firm the flesh and keep it white; more and the fish tastes pickled.
Velouté (No. 415)In this book velouté is a blond roux slackened with white stock and simmered down. For fish, use a fish or light chicken stock rather than a dark one, and finish off the heat with butter as directed at the end, since the buttered sauce will break if it boils afterward.
Cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Ranhofer's fines herbes preparation is chopped mushrooms, shallot and parsley sweated in butter, often with a splash of white wine reduced away. Chopped raw herbs stirred into the sauce are a thinner substitute but will do.
Browning the surface"Brown nicely in the oven" in a coal-range kitchen meant the top of a very hot oven or a salamander. A broiler set high, with the dish 4-5 inches below the element for 2-3 minutes, gets the same crust without cooking the fish a second time.
Parmesan with fishCrumb-and-parmesan gratins on fish were standard in French cookery of the period; use a modest hand, roughly two tablespoons of grated parmesan to a cup of crumbs, so the cheese browns without dominating the haddock.
YieldNo quantity is given. A 3 lb haddock cut this way serves four as a main course, and you will want about 2 cups of velouté in total, half over the fish and half passed at table.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in over 3,500 numbered entries. The title a l'ancienne — "in the old style" — was a stock French menu term rather than a claim about any particular century. Haddock appears in this section alongside cod and halibut, all three North Atlantic fish landed at New York, and the technique here — poach in court bouillon, bone, sauce, crumb, brown — is a familiar way a nineteenth-century professional kitchen turned an inexpensive fish into something worth a dining-room plate.