No. 1227

Pompano a la Toulouse

Split the fish through the middle at both ends through their entire length; braise these in a mirepoix stock with white wine (No. 39), and when the fish is done, drain the stock, and reduce it with the same quantity of veloute sauce (No. 415); thicken it with egg-yolks, and fresh butter, and put it on the back of the fire to keep it near the boiling point, then strain it through a tammy. Dress the fish, garnish around with mushrooms, truffles, fish quenelles, crawfish tails, or else shrimps. Cover the garnishing with the sauce, and lay on top small breaded smelts fried in oil, or these may be replaced by gudgeons or thin slices of perch fillets, place around a border of crusts of bread, buttered and browned in the oven.

← No. 1226 Pompano a la Soya Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1228 Pompano Fillets Fried with Tomato Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's assembly recipe: the fish is simple, the sauce and the garnish are the work. Read it as three separate jobs done in parallel — braise, sauce, garnish — then plate.

The hinge: the egg-yolk liaisonOnce the yolks and butter go in, the sauce must be held hot but never allowed to boil; "the back of the fire" is the cooler zone of a coal range, though Ranhofer's own wording is to keep it near the boiling point. On a modern hob that means the lowest setting or a bain-marie; too much heat will curdle the yolks, and no amount of straining will bring the sauce back.
Braising, not poachingThe fish sits in a shallow buttered pan on a bed of mirepoix with white wine and stock coming part way up, covered. The recipe specifies no oven temperature or cooking time; work to the flesh parting from the backbone. The braising liquid is then the base of the sauce, so do not oversalt it before reducing.
Velouté (No. 415)Velouté in this tradition is generally a blond roux slackened with white veal or chicken stock and simmered long enough to skim clean; No. 415 carries Ranhofer's own formula. A fish velouté made with fish fumet is closer to modern practice here and will not fight the pompano.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force the sauce through. A chinois lined with muslin, or a fine conical strainer pressed with a ladle, does the same job.
QuenellesFish quenelles are a pounded forcemeat of raw fish, panada and cream, shaped between two spoons and poached in barely trembling salted water until they float and firm — a few minutes only. A food processor replaces the mortar entirely.
Gudgeons and smeltsGudgeon is a small European freshwater fish that few fishmongers will stock. Whole smelts, often sold frozen and already cleaned, are the practical choice; small strips of firm white fillet, breaded and fried, stand in as the recipe itself allows.
Crawfish tails and shrimpsBoth are presumably wanted cooked and peeled, though the recipe does not say so. If using crawfish, poach them whole in salted court-bouillon, peel, and reserve — the shells are worth simmering into the braising stock for depth.
The bread border"Crusts of bread, buttered and browned in the oven" are croûtons; the recipe fixes neither their shape nor an oven temperature. Set them around the platter at the last moment or they soften in the sauce.
YieldThe original gives none. Two split pompano of about 1 1/2 lb each, with the garnish, serve four to six as a course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system set down in print — over three thousand numbered items that cross-reference each other, so that a single dish like this one silently calls on a stock, a sauce and a forcemeat recorded elsewhere in the book. "À la Toulouse" was by then a fixed garnish name in French classical cookery, generally traced to a garnish of cockscombs, kidneys, mushrooms and truffles bound in a rich white sauce and served with poultry or in a vol-au-vent; Ranhofer transposes the idea to fish, swapping in quenelles, crawfish tails and fried smelts while keeping the pale thickened sauce that defines the style. The fish itself is the American contribution. Pompano, a Gulf and South Atlantic fish, was prized in nineteenth-century American dining rooms, and it occupies a whole run of numbered recipes here while remaining almost unknown in contemporary Parisian books.