No. 1211

Perch, with Parsley Water, Celery Root and Parsnips

Perche a l'Eau de Persil, de Celeri et de Panais

Scrape four ounces of parsley roots, and the same quantity of parsnips and the same of celery roots; cut them up into very fine shreds. Cook these separately in salted water for twenty minutes, then drain off the water. Cook the perch in this water, and when done and dressed, surround with boiled potato balls made three-quarters of an inch in size and the roots. Serve a part of the well reduced liquid in a separate sauce-boat at the same time as the fish.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A plain court-bouillon dish in which the vegetable cooking water becomes the poaching liquid and then the sauce. The whole point is that nothing is thrown away, so keep the water from the roots.

Parsley rootThis is Hamburg parsley, grown for its pale taproot rather than its leaf; it looks like a small parsnip and tastes of parsley and celeriac. Farmers' markets and Eastern European groceries carry it. If you cannot find it, use more celery root rather than substituting parsley leaf, which contributes nothing to the broth.
The measurementsFour ounces each is by weight, roughly 115 g, so about 340 g of root in total. The recipe says to scrape the roots first, so it is not clear whether the weight is taken before or after trimming; celery root in particular loses a good deal to trimming.
Cook separately, then combineEach root is boiled in its own salted water for twenty minutes; the recipe then has the fish cooked in 'this water', which is best read as the pooled cooking waters. Save every drop, since it is also the base of the sauce.
Twenty minutes is for shreds this fineCut into very fine julienne, parsnip and parsley root will be tender well before twenty minutes and can collapse. Check at eight to ten minutes and pull them while they still hold their shape.
Poaching the perchBring the combined vegetable water to a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, and allow about 8 to 10 minutes for a whole perch of half a pound, or 4 to 6 minutes for fillets. The flesh should just part from the bone. Ranhofer assumes the fish comes to you scaled, gutted and gilled; perch scales are tenacious and easier to remove before cooking than after.
Potato ballsThree-quarters of an inch is a small melon-baller or a Parisienne scoop. Cut them from large waxy potatoes and boil them apart from the fish liquid so they do not cloud it.
The sauce"Well reduced" means the poaching liquid boiled down hard after the fish is lifted out, until it tastes concentrated rather than merely salty. Salt lightly at the start, since reduction concentrates the seasoning. A knob of cold butter whisked in at the end would not be out of keeping with the period and gives it body.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield and does not say how many perch are cooked; twelve ounces of root in total suggests a small dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits among a long run of freshwater fish preparations. Perch, pike and carp were commonplace on European tables and were plentiful in the lakes and rivers supplying New York markets, but they were considered plain eating; a restaurant cook justified their place on the menu through the treatment rather than the fish. The method here is thoroughly French: an aromatic root vegetable water, or eau, doing triple duty as vegetable cooking liquid, poaching broth and reduced sauce. Parsnip was more usual in nineteenth-century American kitchens than it became by the middle of the twentieth, and the near-disappearance of these roots from the vegetable stall is the main obstacle to making this dish now.