No. 1173

Chicken Halibut with Carrot Sauce

Jeune Fletan a la sauce aux Carottes

Cut a well-cleaned eight pound chicken halibut in two lengthwise, and cut each part up into eight ounce pieces; place them in cold water for half an hour, drain and cook in water containing a quarter of the same quantity of milk; season with salt, and remove it from the hot fire at the first boil, leaving it to simmer without boiling, for fifteen minutes. Dress on a folded napkin and surround with very green parsley leaves. Serve at the same time a separate sauce-boat of bechamel sauce (No. 409), mixing in with it grated red carrot previously cooked in butter.

← No. 1172 Chicken Halibut Baked and with Parmesan Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1174 Herrings, Fresh, a la Calaisienne →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain poached halibut from Ranhofer's Delmonico's book, saved by its sauce. Two things carry it: keeping the poaching liquid below a boil, and cooking the carrot in butter until it is sweet rather than raw.

"Chicken halibut"A market term for a young, small halibut, as against the large adults that can run well over 100 lb; the exact weight range varies by source and period. It means tender, fine-flaked flesh, not a separate species. Any halibut of modest size, or thick steaks cut from a larger fish, will behave the same way.
Scale and yieldAn eight-pound fish cut into eight-ounce portions gives about sixteen servings. For four people, four steaks of 6-8 oz each and roughly two quarts of poaching liquid are enough; scale the milk to the same one-part-in-five ratio.
The milk in the waterWater with a quarter its volume of milk is a common poaching liquid for white-fleshed fish. It keeps the flesh pale and slightly sweetens it. Season the liquid assertively with salt, since it is the only seasoning the fish gets before the sauce.
Never let it boilThis is the hinge. Bring to the first bubble, then pull the pan off the heat and hold the liquid at a bare tremble, somewhere around 165-175F, for the fifteen minutes. A rolling boil will squeeze the albumin out of the halibut in white curds.
Fifteen minutes, checkedFifteen minutes suits a thick 8 oz steak in barely-moving liquid, but halibut is lean and turns cottony fast. Modern practice pulls it at 130-135F at the centre, where the flakes just separate; start testing at ten minutes.
The cold-water soakThe half hour in cold water leaches blood from the cut faces and firms the flesh. It is worth doing with fish cut from a whole side; less necessary with clean supermarket steaks, though it does no harm.
The carrot sauceGrate the carrot finely and sweat it in butter over low heat until soft and sweet with no colour, then fold it into the béchamel (No. 409, a milk-based white sauce from a white roux). Raw grated carrot stirred in at the end tastes green and stays crunchy.
The folded napkinNot decoration alone. Poached fish sheds liquid on the platter, and the napkin absorbs it so the pieces are not sitting in a puddle. A clean linen cloth on a warmed dish still does the job.

A Little History

This is No. 1173 from The Epicurean (1894), Charles Ranhofer's enormous compendium of the cooking he oversaw for some thirty years at Delmonico's in New York. "Chicken halibut" was ordinary fishmonger's language for the small ones, in the same way "chicken lobster" still means a lobster near the legal minimum. The dish itself is a demonstration of French method applied to an American fish: a cooking liquid of water and milk to hold the flesh white, a béchamel served apart in its own boat, and a single vegetable purée-in-miniature — the buttered carrot — to give the sauce colour and sweetness without a garnish on the plate. Ranhofer wrote for a kitchen brigade with a numbered sauce repertoire on hand, which is why the recipe can dispose of the béchamel in a cross-reference and spend its words on how the fish is handled.