No. 1196

Spanish Mackerel a la Perigord

Maquereau Espagnol a la Perigord

Pare the fillets removed from the mackerel into half heart-shapes; lay them in a buttered sautoir, decorating the thickest part of each fillet with a rose-shaped ornament of truffles dipped in egg-whites. Baste over with melted butter, lemon juice, white wine, and salt; cover with a buttered paper, and let cook in a slow oven. Dress the fillets, reduce their liquid, adding veloute sauce (No. 415) and slices of truffles fried in butter. Cover the truffles with a third part of this sauce, and glaze the fillets with fish glaze (No. 399) combined with lobster coral butter (No. 580). Serve the remainder of the sauce separately.

← No. 1195 Mackerel, Cream Horseradish Sauce—Salt and S Shad, Herring & Mackerel No. 1197 Spanish Mackerel a la Viennet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock, sauces and garnishes already standing by; the dish itself is a straightforward butter-basted fillet, and everything else is assembly. Read the cross-referenced numbers as a shopping list before you start.

The hinge: cook it gently and brieflySpanish mackerel fillets are thin and oily, and the whole point of the buttered paper and slow oven is to set them without letting them tighten and weep. Ranhofer gives no temperature; a slow oven of this period is generally read as somewhere around 275-325F, and half-heart fillets of 4-6 oz should be done in roughly 8-12 minutes, when the flesh just parts.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than a saucepan and deeper than a skillet. Any low-sided ovenproof saute pan works, so long as the fillets lie flat in one layer with room for the basting liquid.
The fishSpanish mackerel here means Scomberomorus maculatus, the Atlantic species landed off the American Southeast, not the smaller North Atlantic mackerel of the previous recipes. It is milder and firmer. A fresh one buys you everything; oily fish goes off fast and there is no sauce that hides it.
The truffle roseSlices of black truffle are overlapped into a rosette and dipped in lightly beaten egg white, which acts as glue and sets in the oven. Modern black winter truffle is priced accordingly; thin-shaved preserved truffle will hold the shape, and mushroom will not.
Veloute (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with white stock and simmered until it coats; for a fish dish like this a fish-stock version is the sensible reading. Ranhofer assumes you have it standing by. As a rough guide, about a cup of well-reduced veloute will sauce four fillets with some left to pass separately.
Fish glaze and coral butterFish glaze (No. 399) is fish stock reduced to a syrup that sets sticky when cool. Lobster coral butter (No. 580) is the roe of a hen lobster pounded with butter and sieved, valued largely for its colour; it is the hardest element to source today, and paprika butter is one workable stand-in, with the understanding that it is a substitution and not the same thing.
Basting liquidNo quantities are given. For four fillets, roughly 2 oz melted butter, the juice of half a lemon, and a third of a cup of dry white wine will baste and then reduce to a usable base.
YieldTwo mackerel give four fillets, so four half-heart portions as a fish course within a longer menu, or two as a main plate.

A Little History

A la Perigord is not a place-name flourish but a specification: in nineteenth-century French kitchen shorthand it meant truffles, and specifically the black truffles of the Perigord in southwestern France. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its structure explains the terseness here: sauces, glazes and compound butters are numbered items made in bulk elsewhere in the kitchen, so a dish reduces to the few operations unique to it. The pairing of a local American fish with a Perigord garnish is characteristic of the house, which cooked classical French technique on whatever the New York markets landed, and Spanish mackerel was then a prized summer fish along the Atlantic coast, arriving in the city in enough quantity to earn a run of its own recipes in this section.