No. 1209

Perch, Sauce Valois—Boiled

Perche Bouillie a la Sauce Valois

Scale and clean two or three medium sized perch; boil sufficient water in a flat saucepan to cover the fish, adding to it salt, parsley roots with the green leaves, minced onions, and celery; after this has boiled for a few moments, plunge in the fish, and let boil merely for a few times, then set it on one side of the range to finish cooking. If the perch be required hot, serve them on a folded napkin with boiled potatoes on each side of the fish and green parsley at the ends. Serve a Valois and tarragon sauce (No. 554) separately.

← No. 1208 Perch, Polish Style Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1210 Perch, Stuffed and Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain poach in a vegetable court bouillon, finished off the heat, with the whole point of the dish sitting in the sauce served alongside. Two things need translating: the cooking method, which is deliberately gentle, and Valois sauce, which no longer appears under that name.

The hinge: never really boil it"Let boil merely for a few times, then set it on one side of the range" means bring back to a bare simmer and then hold the pan at 160-170F until done. Perch is a lean, flaky fish; a rolling boil shreds the flesh and drives the fillets off the frame. Figure 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, until the flesh at the backbone is opaque.
"Flat saucepan"A wide, shallow pan — a sauteuse or a fish kettle — deep enough for the liquid to cover the fish but not so deep that the fish must be stacked. A 12-inch straight-sided saute pan works for two or three perch.
The court bouillonSalt, parsley root with its tops, minced onion, celery. Salt it like pasta water, about 1 tablespoon per quart, so the poaching liquid seasons the fish rather than leaching it. The original asks only that this boil "a few moments" before the fish goes in, so a brief simmer is all it calls for.
Parsley rootAlso sold as Hamburg parsley or petroushka; it looks like a pale parsnip and tastes of parsley and celeriac. If you cannot find it, use a small parsnip plus a generous handful of parsley stems, which is what it is standing in for.
Valois sauceThe recipe sends you to No. 554 for a "Valois and tarragon sauce." Valois is classically a bearnaise enriched with meat glaze (glace de viande), also recorded under the name Foyot. The "and tarragon" is not redundant in the original scheme — the tarragon reduction is what makes it bearnaise rather than plain hollandaise. Hold it warm rather than hot; too much heat will curdle it.
Scaling perchYellow perch scales are small, tight, and backed by a genuinely sharp dorsal fin and gill covers. Scale under water in a sink to keep them from flying, and trim the dorsal spines with shears before you start.
The napkinNineteenth-century service lifted boiled fish onto a folded linen napkin on the platter, the usual explanation being that it absorbed the poaching liquid instead of letting it pool around the fish. A rack drain and a warm dry platter do the same job.
YieldTwo or three medium perch — roughly 3/4 to 1 lb each whole — serve two people as a main course. The phrasing "if the perch be required hot" implies the fish could also be served cold, though the recipe does not say what would accompany it in that case.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 out of thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and its fish chapters read like an inventory of what came into the city's markets: perch, pike, carp, sturgeon, eel — freshwater fish from the Hudson, the Great Lakes and the interior rivers. The neighboring entry is "Perch, Polish Style," which is no accident. What Ranhofer does here is take a humble panfish, cook it by the most restrained method available, and put a French sauce next to it — Valois, a bearnaise stiffened with meat glaze, generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century Paris restaurant kitchen and also recorded as Foyot after the restaurant of that name. The dish is a small demonstration of the whole book's argument: the technique and the sauce, not the price of the fish, are what make the plate.