No. 1218

Pike Perch or Wall-Eyed Pike Continental Style-Fillets

Filets de Sandre au Continental

Raise the fillets from four medium sized fish, flatten and pare them oval-shape leaving on the skin, then season. Range them in a sautoir containing hot butter, placing them on their cut sides, then poach slightly, drain them and set them under a weight to keep them flat, leaving the butter in the sautoir. Cover the cut side of the fillets with a layer of fish forcemeat (No. 90) finished with red butter (No. 580); smooth this rounded on the top and strew over finely chopped lobster coral. Return the fillets to the sautoir containing the butter, cover over with buttered paper and finish cooking in a slow oven; thicken some good veloute sauce (No. 415) with cream, eggyolks and butter, strain it through a tammy and add to it some oysters and shrimps. Dress the fillets in a circle, lay the oysters and shrimps in the center, and pour the sauce over the whole.

← No. 1217 Pike Perch or Wall-Eyed Pike, Russian Style Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1219 Pike with Hazelnut Butter Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's fillet dish built in three stages: half-cooked fillets, a piped forcemeat crust, then a finished velouté. The hinge is the two-stage cooking — the fillets are only set in butter at first, so the forcemeat has time to firm in the oven without the fish overcooking.

The fishFour medium walleye yield eight fillets; figure on four to six servings. Zander (sandre) is the European original and pike-perch elsewhere; walleye, sauger or a firm perch all behave the same. The skin is left on to hold the fillet's shape under the weight, and can be lifted off before serving if you prefer.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold the fillets in one layer without overlapping. You need the pan surface, not depth.
Poach slightlyIn hot butter this is one to two minutes a side for a half-inch fillet — the flesh should turn opaque at the edges and still be translucent at the centre. Anything more and the second cooking will dry it.
Under a weightA sheet pan with a couple of cans on it, over the drained fillets, for ten minutes as they cool. This flattens the curl so the forcemeat sits level.
Forcemeat and red butterNo. 90 is a pounded fish forcemeat — today a food-processor mousseline of raw white fish, egg white and cream, seasoned and chilled. No. 580, red butter, is butter worked with pounded lobster shell and coral, strained; a good shellfish butter or a spoonful of tomato-tinted lobster butter stands in. Pipe or spread it about a quarter inch thick and dome it slightly.
Lobster coralThe dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral-red on cooking. Rarely available separately now; buy a whole cooked hen lobster and use the meat for the garnish, or substitute finely chopped cooked lobster or a dusting of paprika-tinted crumbs for colour.
Slow ovenAround 300F. Buttered paper is parchment, buttered on the underside so it does not stick to the forcemeat. Twelve to eighteen minutes, until the forcemeat is set and springy at 145F.
Velouté, thickenedNo. 415 is a fish velouté. The cream-and-yolk liaison must not boil once added or it will curdle; hold it below 180°F. "Strain through a tammy" means push it through a fine sieve or chinois — the tammy cloth is optional.
Oysters and shrimpsAdd them to the finished sauce off direct heat and give them barely two minutes. They should just plump and curl at the edge.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book reads as a working record of that kitchen: cross-referenced by number, assuming a brigade with a forcemeat station and a stockpot already going. Sandre is the European zander, a close relative of the North American walleye, and the substitution is one of the quiet Americanisations running through the book -- a Great Lakes fish dressed in a Parisian garniture and labelled "au Continental." The layered construction here, poached fish faced with a contrasting forcemeat and served under sauce, is characteristic of the grande cuisine Ranhofer learned in France and reproduced for a clientele that expected it; so is the frank use of lobster coral and shellfish butter for colour.