No. 1181

Kingfish a la Bordelaise

Raise the fillets from each side of the large inside bone; remove the skin, pare nicely and season. Bestrew a buttered baking dish with chopped up raw shallots, mushrooms and a little garlic; fold the fillets over and trim them pointed on one end; lay them in the dish and moisten with wine court-bouillon (No. 39), let cook slowly in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes, then drain, strain off the liquid, skin off the fat and reduce to a half-glaze, incorporating into it two gills of reduced veloute sauce (No. 415), and a few spoonfuls of mushroon broth. Dress the fish either in a straight row or a circle and cover with the well-reduced sauce, garnishing around with trussed crawfish prepared a la Bordelaise (No. 1008).

← No. 1180 Kingfish a la Bella Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1182 Kingfish a la Figaro →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade kitchen with stock, velouté and court-bouillon already standing on the range; the dish is really a shallow braise finished with its own reduced cooking liquor. Everything hinges on not overcooking the fillets while the sauce is built.

The fish"Kingfish" in an 1894 New York kitchen means the northern kingfish, Menticirrhus saxatilis, a small drum sold along the mid-Atlantic coast, not the king mackerel or the Pacific white seabass that carry the name elsewhere. Any firm, lean white fillet — black drum, redfish, snapper, striped bass — behaves the same way here.
Gills and glazesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of reduced velouté is one cup. "Half-glaze" means the strained cooking liquid boiled down until it is syrupy and coats a spoon, not a measured volume.
Wine court-bouillonNo. 39 is Ranhofer's wine court-bouillon, strained before use. For a fish handled this way, dry white wine cut with light fish stock, seasoned with onion, thyme, parsley stem and a bay leaf, does the same job. It should barely come up the sides of the folded fillets, not cover them.
VeloutéVellouté -- No. 415 is Ranhofer's velouté, a flour-and-butter sauce built on white stock. A cup of it, already reduced, is what gives the finished sauce its body; without it the reduction is thin and sharp from the wine.
Oven heat and timeRanhofer gives no temperatures; "cook slowly in the oven" points to a moderate oven, roughly 325F on a modern dial. Fifteen to twenty minutes suits thick folded fillets of a whole-sided fish; ordinary supermarket fillets folded double will be done in eight to twelve, and the moment they flake at the thickest point they should come out, since they will sit while the sauce reduces.
Mushroom brothThe "few spoonfuls of mushroom broth" is the liquor from cooking or canning button mushrooms, kept as a seasoning in professional kitchens. Water in which dried or fresh mushrooms have simmered, strained, gives the same savory lift.
Bordelaise, twiceThe garnish sends you to No. 1008, crawfish prepared rwith with wine and a mirepoix, and trussed, tail tucked under, for a neat ring around the platter. Whole cooked crawfish or large head-on shrimp arranged around the dish preserve the intention if you are not making the referenced recipe.
YieldRanhofer gives no number. Two fillets from one fish, folded, is one generous portion; scale the shallot-mushroom-garlic bed to cover the bottom of whatever dish holds the fillets in a single layer.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his working system rather than a home cookbook: nearly every recipe cross-references a stock, sauce or garnish held elsewhere in the book, which is why this one is four lines long and points you to three other numbers. "A la Bordelaise" is one of the most elastic labels in nineteenth-century French cookery — in a red-wine meat context it means marrow and shallot, but on fish and shellfish it generally signals white wine, shallot and garlic, and by long association the crawfish of the Gironde. Kingfish itself was a common, inexpensive New York market fish in the period, landed locally through the summer; its appearance in a Delmonico's repertoire is a reminder that even the grandest American restaurant of the age built its fish cookery on what the Fulton Market brought in that morning, dressing a modest local drum in the vocabulary of Bordeaux.