No. 1219

Pike with Hazelnut Butter Sauce

Brochet au Beurre Noisette

Cut in half pound slices and marinate for one hour in salt a medium sized scaled and cleaned pike, drain and put the pieces into a saucepan with water, salt, vinegar, cut up roots and onions, also a bunch of parsley. Put the saucepan on a good fire letting the liquid boil for five minutes then remove it on one side to keep quivering for a quarter of an hour in such a way that the fish cooks in the meantime. Put eight ounces of melted butter in a saucepan, pouring it off from its sediment, heat it to reach the degree of hazelnut butter (No. 567), then throw in an ounce of chopped parsley. Dress the fish; surround with fresh parsley leaves and send the butter to the table in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1218 Pike Perch or Wall-Eyed Pike Continental Sty Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1220 Pompano a la Anthelme →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain court-bouillon poach finished with browned butter. Everything hinges on the butter reaching the right colour and on the poaching liquid never actually boiling.

Beurre noisette contains no nutsNoisette here describes colour and smell — butter cooked until the milk solids toast to hazelnut brown and the fat smells nutty. Ranhofer cross-refers to his No. 567 for the stage; this recipe itself directs melted butter poured off its sediment and then heated further.
Clarify first, then brownMelt the 8 oz and pour off the clear fat from the milky sediment before heating it further. Unclarified butter will speckle and can taste scorched before the fat colours; poured-off butter browns evenly and cleanly.
"Quivering" means about 175F"Quivering" -- The recipe gives no temperature. The five-minute boil is only to bring the pot up; after that the pan is drawn to the side and the surface should barely shiver rather than boil. A rolling boil shreds pike, which is lean and flakes apart readily.
Cooking timeHalf-pound slices in a quarter hour at that temperature is about right for pike cut across the body an inch or more thick. Thinner steaks will be done in eight to ten minutes — the flesh should be opaque to the backbone and pull cleanly from it.
"Cut up roots"Nineteenth-century kitchen shorthand for the aromatic root vegetables: carrot, parsnip, celeriac or celery stalk, sometimes turnip. Use whatever combination you have, sliced thin so it gives up flavour in fifteen minutes.
The salt marinadeAn hour of dry salting on cut slices firms lean white flesh and seasons it through. Ranhofer says only to drain the pieces; if your salting has been heavy, rinsing and patting dry first will keep the court-bouillon, which is also salted, from turning aggressively salty.
Vinegar quantity is unstatedThe recipe gives no measure. A modest amount — a splash rather than a soaking — sharpens the liquid and helps set the surface of the fish; scale it to the volume of water in your pot.
Eight ounces of butterThat is two sticks for one whole pike, in the manner of the period. Half that amount browns more quickly and still coats the fish; browned butter reduces further as it cooks, so allow for the loss.
Bones and yieldPike carries a row of forked intermuscular bones along the upper fillet that no amount of poaching softens; warn the table or fillet and pin-bone before serving. Ranhofer specifies only a 'medium sized' pike cut into half-pound slices, so yield depends on the fish you get.

A Little History

Brochet au beurre noisette is one of the plainest things in Charles Ranhofer's 1894 The Epicurean, and that is the point: Delmonico's kitchen ran on a French repertoire in which a poached freshwater fish with browned butter was a standard, not a showpiece. Pike was a serious fish in European cooking long before it reached American menus — a lean, firm-fleshed predator prized in France, Germany and Poland, and the basis of the mousseline dumpling called quenelle de brochet — but in New York it came from the Great Lakes and the northern rivers, and Ranhofer groups it here with eel, carp and sturgeon as freshwater fare distinct from his long chapters of sea fish. Browned butter with parsley and a little acidity is the oldest and most durable dressing for such fish. The cross-reference to No. 567 is characteristic of the book, which was written as a working reference for professional cooks and expects the reader to have the fundamentals already at hand.