No. 1259

Sheepshead a la Buena Vista

Put a well cleansed sheepshead into the fish kettle and cook it in mirepoix stock (No. 419); when the fish is done, dress and garnish around with sauted shrimp and the soft part of some oysters. The sauce to accompany this is made with bechamel (No. 409) mixed with a tomato puree (No. 730), seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice; strain this sauce and add to it a few blanched tarragon leaves, pour half of this over the fish and garnishing. Place around some fried porgy paupiettes (No. 1230), and potato cakes (No. 2778). Serve the remainder of the sauce in a sauce tureen.

← No. 1258 Sheepshead a la Bourguignonne Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1260 Sheepshead a la Meissonier →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going and a numbered sauce for every occasion. Stripped down, this is a whole poached fish with a tomato-tinted béchamel — sauce aurore in all but name — and three garnishes that can be reduced to one without loss.

The hinge: poach, never boilThe recipe says only to cook the fish in mirepoix stock; a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil is the usual reading, since hard boiling splits the skin and shreds the flakes before the interior is done. Modern practice holds the liquid well below the boil with the fish covered; a whole sheepshead of a few pounds takes roughly half an hour, though time varies with the fish. Note that fish taken off at 130-135F is below the 145F usually recommended for safety.
Mirepoix stock (No. 419)Ranhofer's mirepoix is an aromatic base of root vegetables and herbs moistened with wine and reduced, closer to a court bouillon than to a fish fumet; nineteenth-century versions often also include a little raw ham or bacon. The exact composition of No. 419 is not reproduced here. Any well-made court bouillon serves.
Béchamel and tomato puréeBechamel and tomato puree -- His bechamel (No. 409) is a white roux sauce built with milk or cream, in the period often enriched with a little reduced stock. Combined with tomato puree it approaches what is frequently called sauce aurore, though that sauce is as often built on velouté. About three parts bechamel to one part puree keeps the tomato in check; more makes a markedly acidic sauce.
Sheepshead and substitutesArchosargus probatocephalus, the black-and-white striped Atlantic sheepshead, was a staple of nineteenth-century American fish markets and is still landed in the Gulf and South Atlantic. It is firm and mild. Black drum, red snapper, striped bass or a large porgy poach the same way.
"The soft part of some oysters"Ranhofer means the body and mantle with the tough adductor muscle trimmed away. Warm them in their own liquor for under a minute, until the edges just ruffle. Anything longer and they seize into rubber.
Sauted shrimpSmall peeled shrimp in butter, thirty to ninety seconds a side depending on size. They are a garnish laid around the platter, not a component cooked into the sauce, so cook them last and add them hot.
Tarragon leavesBlanch the leaves five seconds in boiling water and refresh in cold, which fixes the green and softens the anise edge. Add them after straining the sauce so they stay whole and visible.
The garnishes are optionalPaupiettes are thin fillets spread with forcemeat and rolled, here fried; the potato cakes of No. 2778 are a shaped potato preparation browned in fat, though the detail is not given in this entry. Either can be dropped for a home service. The dish reads perfectly well as poached fish, shrimp, oysters and sauce.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A whole fish of this size with the garnishes would plausibly serve six to eight in a period service, or four to six as a main course today, and perhaps three cups of sauce, half for the platter and half for the tureen.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the dishes he cooked during three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York. The book is full of dishes named for battles, patrons and public figures, and Buena Vista is generally taken as a nod to the February 1847 battle of the Mexican-American War, a name that attached itself to streets, hotels and menu items across the United States for the rest of the century. Sheepshead itself is the more interesting survival: it was so common in East Coast markets that Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn is named for it, and Ranhofer gives it a long run of preparations — Bourguignonne, Meissonier, and this one — treating it exactly as a French kitchen would treat turbot or brill. The technique is wholly Parisian, poaching in an aromatic court bouillon and finishing with a compound béchamel, but the shrimp, oysters and native fish are American, which is the whole argument of the book in a single entry.