No. 1261

Sheepshead, Cardinal Sauce

Sheepshead a la Sauce Cardinal

Clean and prepare a sheepshead, tying down the head, then place it on the grate; plunge this into cold salted water in a fish kettle; place on the fire, and at the first boil, cover the kettle and remove it to one side so that the liquid only quivers; keep it thus for forty-five to sixty minutes, then drain and rub the surface over with a piece of butter; dress the sheepshead and garnish it around with very green parsley branches and olive-shaped potatoes boiled in salted water. Serve at the same time a cardinal sauce (No. 442) in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 1260 Sheepshead a la Meissonier Pompano, Snapper & Other Fish No. 1262 Sheepshead with Thickened Court Bouillon →

For the Modern Kitchen

A whole poached fish, served hot with a lobster-red sauce alongside. Everything hinges on the water never returning to a boil, and on cutting the poaching time roughly in half.

The timing is the problemForty-five to sixty minutes is generous for all but a very large whole fish, and the recipe does not say what size it assumes. Reckon on about 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, and pull the fish at 130-135F at the bone; flesh that flakes into dry curds has gone too far.
Cold start, no boilStarting a whole fish in cold salted water and bringing it up slowly is still correct practice — it cooks the outer flesh and the centre closer to evenly and keeps the skin from splitting. Once it trembles, hold it there. A rolling boil will tear the fish apart and cloud the liquid.
The grateA fish kettle came with a perforated rack and handles so the whole fish could be lifted out intact. A rack or trivet in a roasting pan works, or improvise a sling from two long doubled strips of cheesecloth laid across the pan before the fish goes in.
Tying down the headA turn of kitchen twine around the head and through the gill opening keeps the head from pulling away as the collagen softens. It matters only because the fish is presented whole; skip it if you are serving portions.
Cardinal sauceRanhofer's No. 442 is a béchamel or fish velouté finished with lobster butter and, traditionally, pounded lobster coral, which supplies the cardinal red. Anything sold today as "cardinal sauce" is likely to be something else, so build it from a lobster-butter recipe rather than buying.
Olive-shaped potatoesPotatoes turned with a paring knife into seven-sided olives, roughly 1½ inches long — the cut now called tourné. Small new potatoes peeled and trimmed give the same effect with less waste.
The fish itselfAtlantic sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus) is firm and sweet but rarely sold outside the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts. Black drum, porgy, striped bass or red snapper all poach whole and take the sauce equally well.
YieldA whole fish of 6 to 8 pounds serves eight to ten as written, with the potatoes. Serve the sauce warm but never hot enough to break the butter.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that kitchen's working repertoire set down in print — which is why an American Gulf and Atlantic fish arrives here dressed in French service, poached whole in a fish kettle and sent out with a classical sauce in a boat. Cardinal sauce is generally said to take its name from the colour of a cardinal's robes, the red coming from lobster coral and lobster butter. Sheepshead was a far more prominent market fish in nineteenth-century New York than it is now, and Ranhofer gives it a long run of preparations.