No. 1231

Porgies with Chablis Wine

porgies au vin de Chablis

Prepare enough court bouillon (No. 39) with white Chablis wine to cover the fish; range some well cleansed fish on the grate of a fish kettle, boil the court bouillon in the kettle, and replace the grate containing the fish into the boiling liquid. Give a few boils, then remove to the side of the range, keeping the kettle covered for a few minutes; when the fish is cooked, drain it off and dress it on a napkin laid over a long dish; surround it with sprigs of parsley. Drain the broth, skim off the fat, reduce, and thicken it with small pieces of kneaded butter (No. 579); boil it once or twice, then remove, and finish with a few pats of fresh butter, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.

← No. 1230 Porgies, Paupiettes Hindostan (paupiettes de Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1232 Red Snapper a la Cherot →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a straightforward wine court bouillon poach finished with a beurre manié. The cross-references to other numbered recipes are the only real obstacle.

The hinge: never let it boil hardThe hinge: "Give a few boils, then remove to the side of the range" means the fish goes into boiling liquid but then finishes gently, on the cooler part of the stove with the kettle covered, rather than at a sustained rolling boil. A hard boil will tear the skin and drive the flesh into curds; hold the liquid at a bare shiver, and a 1 lb porgy should be done in something like 8-10 minutes.
Court bouillon (No. 39)In Ranhofer's book this is an aromatic poaching liquid of water and wine with vegetables and herbs, brought to the boil before the fish goes in. Here the Chablis makes up a large share of the liquid, so expect to need a good deal of dry Chablis, or any unoaked Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, to cover two or three fish.
Kneaded butter (No. 579)Beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, dropped in cold in small pieces and boiled briefly to cook out the flour. Roughly 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp flour per cup of reduced broth gives a light sauce.
PorgiesPorgy means scup or one of its relatives on the Atlantic coast, sold whole at 3/4 to 1 1/2 lb. Sea bream, sea bass or small snapper poach the same way; count one small fish per person.
Fish kettle and grateThe perforated rack is what lets you lower and lift the fish without breaking it. A roasting pan with a cake rack, or a wide sauté pan with the fish on a doubled sling of cheesecloth, does the same job.
Reducing the brothStrain the poaching liquid and boil it down hard, to about a quarter of its volume, before thickening. Undiluted court bouillon left long is thin and sour; the reduction is where the sauce gets its body.
FinishingThe last butter, parsley and lemon go in off the heat. Once they are in, the sauce cannot be reboiled without breaking.
The napkinServing poached fish on a folded linen napkin was standard nineteenth-century practice: the cloth absorbs the water that keeps seeping out and stops the platter flooding. A bed of parsley or a wire fish plate achieves the same thing now.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down at length. Poaching whole fish in a wine court bouillon and finishing the liquid as its own sauce is classic French practice, but the fish here is thoroughly local: porgy, or scup, was landed in quantity along the Atlantic seaboard and was cheap enough to be considered a common market fish rather than a luxury. The dish is a good example of how the restaurant dressed inexpensive American ingredients in French technique and French vocabulary. The service on a napkin and the ring of parsley belong to the same period of formal table presentation.