No. 1184

Kingfish a la Princelay

Pare into ovals some fillets taken from a fish, season with salt and pepper; fry them in oil and when done, dress either in a row or in a circle. Fry a little flour in oil without browning, add chopped onions, and one bay leaf, moisten with good court bouillon (No. 38) to obtain a rather light sauce, reduce it well, pass it through a tammy, throw in small capers and cover the fish with this sprinkle.

← No. 1183 Kingfish a la Montgolfier Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1185 Kingfish a la Sultana →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade that already has stock and court bouillon at hand, so the whole method is compressed into five lines. The hinge is the sauce: a blond roux moistened with court bouillon, reduced hard, strained, then finished with capers off the heat.

What kingfish means hereIn New York markets of the 1890s "kingfish" usually meant the northern kingfish or whiting, a small firm-fleshed drum, not the king mackerel sold under that name in the South today. Any firm white fillet of moderate thickness behaves the same way; the recipe sits in a chapter of interchangeable fish preparations for that reason.
Pare into ovalsThis means trimming each fillet to a neat oval with a knife, purely for the plating in a row or ring. The trim is worth keeping for stock rather than discarding.
Court bouillon (No. 38)The cross-reference points to Ranhofer's own court bouillon, a poaching liquid of water with wine or vinegar plus aromatic vegetables and herbs; its exact composition is not given here. A well-seasoned fish fumet or light fish stock stands in for it directly; if you use commercial stock, taste before reducing, since reduction concentrates its salt.
Fry a little flour in oil without browningA blond roux. The recipe gives no proportions beyond "a little flour" in oil; cook it over moderate heat only until it loses its raw edge, stopping short of colour, since the sauce is meant to stay pale.
Pass through a tammyA tammy was a loose worsted cloth through which sauce was wrung, straining and smoothing in one motion. A fine chinois or a sieve lined with muslin does the same job; the onion and bay leaf are flavouring only and are removed at this stage.
Capers go in lastThey are added after straining, not before, so they stay whole in the sauce. Rinse and drain brined capers, or rinse and soak salt-packed ones, before adding.
TimingFillets of this size fry through in three to four minutes total in shallow oil over fairly brisk heat. "When done" in the original assumes a cook watching for the flesh to turn opaque and just begin to flake; a further wait in the pan while the sauce reduces will dry them, so make the sauce first.
YieldNo quantity is given. Figure two trimmed fillets per person and only enough reduced sauce to coat rather than pool.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York. Its fish chapters run to many numbered variations on a handful of species, each distinguished mainly by garnish and sauce and each given a proper name -- Montgolfier, Sultana, Princelay -- in the French service style, where naming a preparation after a person, a place or a fashionable idea was how a kitchen catalogued its repertoire and how a menu signalled variety. Kingfish, or whiting, was a common and inexpensive fish in the Atlantic markets of the period. The cross-references are the real point of the book: a line like "moisten with good court bouillon (No. 38)" only works because the reader is expected to be a cook with the whole system in front of him, not a household following a single dish.