No. 1186

Kingfish, Baked

Kingfish au Gratin

Select a good fresh kingfish, take off the fillets, suppressing the skin; season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then fold them in two and pare nicely; butter the bottom of a baking dish, bestrew it with chopped onions and mushrooms; range the fillets over, laying a fluted mushroom (No. 118) on each fillet. Pour over a cold half-glaze sauce (No. 413), pour into the bottom of the dish, three or four tablespoonfuls of white wine; bestrew bread-crumbs over, and sprinkle the surface with a brush dipped in melted butter. Set the dish into a moderately heated oven, and let the fillets cook for fifteen to eighteen minutes; after removing the dish lay it on another to be sent to the table.

Another Way.—Butter a baking dish, and place in it the fish folded in two, nicely pared; pour over some white wine, lay mushroom heads on top, and mask with a brown sauce (No. 416), into which a quarter as much tomato sauce (No. 549) has been mixed. Bestrew the surface with bread raspings, pour melted butter over all, and bake and cook in a hot oven; when serving press the juice of a lemon on it, and besprinkle with chopped parsley.

← No. 1185 Kingfish a la Sultana Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1187 Kingfish on the Dish—Gastrite →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with stock pots already going, and he leans on cross-references for nearly every component. The dish itself is a straightforward gratin of folded fillets; the work is in the sauce you bring to it.

The hinge: fold, then time it shortFolding the fillets in two doubles their thickness, which is why 15-18 minutes works at all. Pull them at 130-135F at the thickest point of the fold; kingfish is lean and turns cottony within a couple of minutes of that.
What kingfish means hereIn 1890s New York this is the northern kingfish, Menticirrhus saxatilis, a small drum from the Atlantic markets, not the king mackerel or the yellowtail that carries the name elsewhere. Whiting, croaker, black sea bass or any firm white fillet stands in without changing the dish.
Oven temperaturesRanhofer gives none. A "moderately heated" oven is generally read as roughly 350-375F, and the "hot oven" of the second version -- where the brown-and-tomato mask wants to colour quickly -- as roughly 425-450F.
Half-glaze, coldNo. 413 is demi-glace. The instruction to use it cold matters -- it should be set to a soft jelly so it clings to the fillets instead of running to the bottom of the dish. A reduced veal or brown chicken stock thickened lightly will do; a thin sauce here just poaches the fish.
Sweat the base firstRaw chopped onion strewn under the fillets will still be raw after eighteen minutes. Cook the onion and chopped mushrooms in butter until dry, essentially a duxelles, before the fillets go in.
Fluted mushrooms and bread raspingsNo. 118 is a mushroom cap scored in curved grooves with a knife tip, purely decorative; plain sauteed caps are the same thing to eat. "Bread raspings" are the grated crusts of dried bread, coarser and darker than fresh crumbs, and they brown faster.
"Pare nicely"Trim the folded fillets to an even, neat shape with a knife, both for appearance and so that they cook at one rate.
ServingThe gratin dish goes to the table set on a second dish, the usual period handling for a hot baking dish. Ranhofer gives no quantities or yield.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its fish chapters read as a census of what came up from the Fulton Market: pompano, sheepshead, weakfish, and the small Atlantic kingfish that fills several consecutive numbered recipes here. Kingfish was well regarded in nineteenth-century American cookery, though it does not travel or keep well. The treatment itself is thoroughly French: a buttered dish strewn with onion and mushroom, a masking sauce, crumbs and butter, browned in the oven. That is the classic au gratin method, and Ranhofer's habit of offering "another way" with a brown sauce cut with tomato suggests the kitchen could reach for whichever sauce was already on the stove.