No. 1257

Sheepshead a la Bechamel

Cook two pounds of peeled mushroom heads with butter and lemon juice, then cut them up into transverse slices. Butter a border mold (Fig. 139) either oval or round according to the shape of the dish it is intended for; bestrew the inside with bread-crumbs and fill in the empty space with duchess potato preparation (No. 2785); press down the potatoes well, butter over with a brush, then set it on a baking sheet to brown nicely in the oven. Cut a six-pound sheepshcad into square pieces, cook them in salted water, and as soon as done, drain; shred the fish suppressing all the bones, skin, etc., and put it into a sautoir; pour over some good, reduced, thick bechamel (No. 409), raw cream and mushroom broth, adding butter piece by piece after it is taken from the fire. Invert the border on a dish--garnish the center with the shredded sheepshead alternating with layers of the sliced mushrooms; pour over a little of the sauce and shape it into a dome; cover the summit with a layer of Mornay sauce (No. 504), smooth nicely, then besprinkle with grated parmesan and melted butter, glaze in a very hot oven or else a gas salamander (Fig. 123). Decorate the dome with four or six trussed crawfish and serve separately a reduced bechamel sauce (No. 409) finished with red butter (No. 580).

← No. 1256 Shad, with Sorrel Puree and Sorrel Leaves Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1258 Sheepshead a la Bourguignonne →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock pots already going and a numbered cross-reference for every component; read backwards, this is a fish gratin built inside a ring of piped potato. The hinge is moisture control — the shredded fish must be bound by a béchamel reduced thick enough to hold a dome, or the whole thing slumps out of the potato border.

The fishSheepshead here is the Atlantic Archosargus probatocephalus, a firm, sweet-fleshed porgy still landed on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts, though it also ranges north along the Mid-Atlantic. Any firm white fish that flakes into large shreds works — black drum, striped bass, cod, haddock — in the same 6 lb whole weight, which, given the large head and heavy skin, will yield perhaps 2 to 2½ lb of picked flesh.
Cooking the fish"Cook them in salted water" means poach at a bare shiver, not boil; squared pieces of thick fillet are done in 6 to 10 minutes, when the flesh just parts. Boiled hard, the flakes shred to cotton and the finished dome turns dry under the sauce.
The cross-referencesNo. 409 is Ranhofer's béchamel; No. 504 his Mornay, a béchamel finished with grated cheese; No. 2785 duchess potato is riced boiled potato beaten with egg yolks and butter, stiff enough to hold a shape. Any competent modern versions of the three will do.
Border moldA ring mold or savarin mold, buttered and crumbed, then packed with the potato and browned on a sheet pan. Ranhofer gives neither temperature nor time: a moderately hot oven, until the crumbed surface sets and colors. Piping the potato onto an ovenproof platter in a thick ring is the shortcut, and avoids unmolding altogether.
Mushroom brothThe mushrooms are cooked in butter and lemon juice, which keeps them pale (no water is specified). The recipe then calls for mushroom broth in the sauce; the liquor the mushrooms throw is the obvious source, though mushroom broth is also a preparation in its own right. Do not brown the mushrooms — the dish is deliberately pale.
Mounting with butterThe butter is added piece by piece off the heat. Returning the pan to the flame after enriching will break the sauce and leave the fish sitting in oil.
SalamanderA gas salamander is an overhead broiler. Glaze under a domestic broiler on the top rack, one to three minutes, watching continuously — Parmesan and butter go from gold to black quickly.
Red butter and crawfishNo. 580 is a compound butter worked with crustacean shells and/or coral, coloring the accompanying sauce pink; lobster or shrimp shells give a similar result. "Trussed" crawfish are whole crayfish cooked with the tail curled under, a decoration rather than a component.
YieldA 6 lb fish plus the potato border serves eight to ten as a course. The finished dish waits badly; assemble and glaze immediately before it goes out.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's across most of the period between 1862 and 1896, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working system set down in some twelve hundred pages of numbered, interlocking preparations. This dish is a good sample of the method: nothing in it is invented for the occasion, the béchamel, the Mornay, the duchess potato and the red butter all being standing components used across dozens of other entries. Sheepshead appears often in American cookbooks of the period and was a familiar fish in the New York market — the Brooklyn place name records it — before it became scarce in northern waters late in the century, for reasons still argued over. Presenting it shredded in cream sauce inside a browned potato ring, capped with cheese and crowned with crayfish, is a characteristic nineteenth-century restaurant answer to a plain fish: build it into architecture and name it after the sauce.