No. 1223

Pompano a la Macedoine

Have several fresh fish; lift off the fillets, suppress the skin and cut them into thin slices; lay these in a buttered sautoir one beside the other, and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg; when they are cooked set them under a weight to get cold, mask over with a well reduced allemande sauce (No. 407), into which has been stirred some mushroom puree (No. 722). Bread-crumb them English style (No. 13), and lay each fillet close, one beside the other, in the sautoir, pour over some butter and brown them in a brisk oven; when removed dress them in a circle, garnish the center with a vegetable macedoine (No. 2755), thickened with fresh butter just when ready to serve.

← No. 1222 Pompano a la Duclair Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1224 Pompano a la Mazarin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock, sauces and garnishes already standing by, so the recipe reads as a list of assembly steps. Read backwards from the finish: the dish is cold-set, coated fillets crumbed and browned, ringed around hot diced vegetables.

The hinge: press and chillThe fillets must be cooked, weighted flat and completely cold before they are masked. A warm fillet will not hold a reduced sauce coating, and the crumb crust will slide off in the oven. Allow at least two hours in the refrigerator under a plate and a light weight.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow saute pan, not a covered baking dish. Any wide skillet that will hold the sliced fillets in a single layer without overlapping works.
Allemande sauce (No. 407)A veloute finished with an egg-yolk liaison and lemon, usually enriched with cream. "Well reduced" here means reduced until it will coat and then set firmly when cold, thicker than a pouring sauce. A stiff fish veloute is the practical substitute.
Breadcrumbed English style (No. 13)Egg, seasoned and let down with a little oil, then fine crumbs; some versions flour first. Chill again after crumbing so the coating sets.
Brisk ovenA hot oven, which modern cooks usually read as somewhere around 425 to 450F. The fillets are already cooked, so the oven is only there to set and colour the crust; eight to ten minutes is usually enough, and longer will dry the fish and split the sauce coating.
Cooking the filletsThin slices of pompano need only two to three minutes a side in butter over moderate heat. The instruction "when they are cooked" assumes a cook watching closely; overcooking at this stage guarantees a dry final dish.
Vegetable macedoine (No. 2755)Mixed vegetables cut in even small dice, most often carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, each cooked separately until just tender. Butter is stirred in off the heat at the last moment so it emulsifies rather than oils.
Substituting for pompanoWhole pompano is expensive and not always available. Any firm, fine white fillet that slices cleanly, such as black sea bass, snapper or grouper, behaves the same way under sauce and crumbs.
YieldThe original gives none. Figure about 1 1/2 lb of skinned fillets, which will take three or four 1 lb pompano, for four as a plated course, with roughly 2 cups of macedoine for the centre.

A Little History

This is a Delmonico's dish, from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some thirty years as chef of the New York restaurant. Macedoine is the French kitchen term for a mixture of vegetables or fruits cut in small even dice, and the name is generally traced to Macedonia as a byword for a mixed assemblage of peoples under Alexander; by the nineteenth century the word had become plain professional vocabulary rather than a flourish. Pompano appears again and again in this section because the Gulf fishery seems to have been reaching New York in some quantity by this period, and Ranhofer treated it as a luxury white fish worth the full apparatus of French service: cooked, chilled, coated in a set sauce, crumbed, browned and dressed in a ring around a garnish. The technique is the same one applied to sweetbreads and chicken breasts elsewhere in the book, and it exists partly because a kitchen serving hundreds needed dishes that could be prepared to the crumbing stage hours in advance.