No. 1170

Halibut Kadgiori

Fletan Kadgiori

Fry in butter, one ounce of chopped onions with half a pound of rice; heat together and moisten with fish stock (No. 195) to three times its heighth, then cook for twenty minutes; afterward pour it into a plain border mold (Fig. 139) rounded on the top. Cut a young chicken halibut into five-eighths of an inch square pieces, having about two pounds in all; fry these in butter in a frying pan with salt and cayenne pepper, add to it three chopped up hard boiled eggs, a pint of veloute sauce (No. 415), and two ounces of butter; mix well, and dress this fish inside the unmolded rice border, besprinkling the rice with hazelnut butter (No. 567).

← No. 1169 Halibut a la Richmond Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1171 Halibut, with Fine Herbs a la Reynal →

For the Modern Kitchen

A late-Victorian restaurant kedgeree, built as a rice ring with the fish and sauce spooned into the centre. Two of Ranhofer's cross-references hide the whole character of the dish, so read those first.

Hazelnut butter is browned butterRanhofer's beurre noisette (No. 567) contains no hazelnuts; it is butter cooked until the milk solids turn nut-brown and it smells of toasted nuts. Pour it over the rice ring at the last moment, while it is still foaming.
Velouté, in one lineVelouté, in one line -- Ranhofer's velouté (No. 415) is a white sauce: a white roux let down with stock and simmered until it coats a spoon. About 2 oz butter and 2 oz flour to a pint of liquid gives the body wanted here. Anything thinner will flood the rice border.
"Three times its heighth"Not three times the volume of rice by weight but three times its depth in the pan: pour the rice into the pot, note how high it sits, and add stock to three times that level. For a half pound of rice (about 1 1/4 cups) in a wide pan this lands near 2 1/2 to 3 cups of stock. Judge it in the pan rather than by the number.
The fish is the hingeFive-eighths-inch dice of halibut are cooked through in two to three minutes over brisk heat. Fry them just until the surfaces turn opaque and set, then fold in the eggs, sauce and butter off the heat; the residual heat finishes them. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony fast.
"Young chicken halibut"A market term for a small fish, roughly 10 to 20 lb, prized for finer flake. Any two pounds of thick halibut fillet works; skinned loin cuts dice most neatly.
The border moldA plain ring mold, savarin mold or ordinary bundt pan, buttered, packed firmly with the hot rice and left to sit five minutes before turning out. Cooling slightly is what lets it hold its shape.
SeasoningCayenne is the only spice named, which distinguishes this from curry-spiced kedgeree. Use it sparingly at the frying stage and correct the velouté for salt, since the fish stock is already seasoned.
YieldServes six as a course, four as a main dish. It does not reheat well; the halibut toughens.

A Little History

Kedgeree reached English and American tables from India, where khichri is a dish of rice and pulses; British households in the nineteenth century remade it as a breakfast dish of flaked fish, rice and hard-boiled egg, and it is generally traced to the Anglo-Indian table rather than to any single cook. What Charles Ranhofer does with it at Delmonico's in The Epicurean (1894) shows how thoroughly the French kitchen absorbed foreign names: the curry is gone, the rice becomes a pilaf molded into a ring, the fish is bound in velouté and finished with beurre noisette, and the whole thing is served as a composed entrée rather than a breakfast.