No. 1220

Pompano a la Anthelme

Raise the fillets from four fresh fish, leaving on the skin; cut with a small vegetable spoon, half inch diameter balls of potatoes, obtaining a quart when finished, boil them in salted water, and as soon as they are done, drain, return them to the saucepan, cover with a cloth, and set them in a slack oven for a few minutes. Boil up a pint of fresh cream, then add to it the potatoes. Season the fish fillets with salt, flour them over and cook them in a frying pan with clarified butter, when done range them in the center of a dish. Thicken the potatoes with shrimp butter (No. 586) and dress them around the fish besprinkling the whole with very green chopped parsley.

← No. 1219 Pike with Hazelnut Butter Sauce Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1221 Pompano a la Carondelet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade and a numbered cross-reference system. Two things need translating before you start: the shrimp butter it sends you off to make, and the fact that the potatoes, not the fish, carry the sauce.

The hinge: shrimp butter off the heatThe cream and potatoes are thickened with shrimp butter (No. 586), a compound butter of pounded shrimp meat and shells worked into soft butter and strained. Whisk it into the cream off the direct flame, in pieces, as you would finish a beurre blanc; boiled, it separates and the pink slicks out into oily beads.
"Slack oven"A cool oven; Ranhofer gives no temperature, and period usage is loose, so roughly 250-300F on a modern dial. The cloth-covered pan of drained potatoes goes in only to dry the surface starch so the balls absorb cream rather than shed water.
Potato ballsCut with a parisienne scoop (Ranhofer's "small vegetable spoon"). A quart of half-inch balls means starting with roughly 3 lb of large, waxy-to-medium potatoes, since the trim loss is severe. Save the scraps for a purée.
Cooking the potatoesBoil in well-salted water and pull them at just-tender, 6-8 minutes for half-inch balls. They finish in the cream, and overcooked balls collapse into the sauce.
The fish itselfSkin-on pompano fillets from a 1.5-2 lb fish run about half an inch at the thickest point: 2-3 minutes skin-side down in clarified butter, a minute on the flesh side. Flour lightly and shake off the excess or the coating pastes up in the butter.
If there is no pompanoIt is expensive and regional now. Any firm, mild fillet of similar thickness works, such as black sea bass, dorade, or small striped bass, cooked the same way.
Cream quantityA pint of cream to a quart of potatoes gives a loose, spooned sauce, not a coating. Reduce it a little before adding the potatoes if you want it to hold on the plate.
YieldFour fish, eight fillets: serves four generously as a main course, eight as a plated fish course in the multi-course manner the book assumes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered receipts are written as a working reference for cooks who already know the trade. Pompano appears repeatedly in it, and Delmonico's traded on exactly the kind of luxury supply line that brought Gulf fish to New York markets. Dishes in the book are routinely named for patrons, colleagues and figures of the day; the dedication "a la Anthelme" may be a nod to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of Physiologie du goût, though Ranhofer gives no explanation, as he almost never does. The construction is pure haute cuisine of the period: a plainly sauteed fillet in the center of the dish, surrounded by a garnish that has been given its own sauce, here potatoes turned into neat spheres and bound with cream and shellfish butter, with chopped parsley for color.