No. 1262

Sheepshead with Thickened Court Bouillon

Sheepshead au Court Bouillon Lie

Clean well a very fresh sheepshead weighing about six pounds, and place it on a grate of a fish kettle; pour over just sufficient court bouillon (No. 38) to cover. Set the fish kettle on the fire and let the liquid come to a boil while skimming, then remove it at once to the side of the range to keep quivering without boiling for half an hour. Melt some butter in a pan, add to it a finely chopped shallot and fry it colorless, also eight ounces of minced mushrooms; moisten with some of the court bouillon and let reduce. Lay the sheepshead on a buttered dish; season with salt and mignonette and pour the sauce over; cover with another dish and finish cooking in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes. Just when ready to serve, dress the fish, reduce the stock and thicken it with some veloute sauce (No. 415) and a little tomato sauce (No. 549); pour it over the fish after removing the skin from both ends. This sauce should be rather light than otherwise. Sprinkle chopped parsley over all.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with numbered base preparations on hand; the whole dish hinges on liquid that never boils. Read the poaching stage as a low simmer and the rest follows.

"Quivering without boiling"This is the instruction that matters. Hold the court bouillon at a bare simmer, roughly 175-180F, with barely a tremor on the surface. A boil at any point will toughen and break up the flakes of a large fish.
Total cooking timeHalf an hour of poaching plus fifteen to twenty minutes in the oven is generous even for a six-pound fish. Many cooks now pull fish at 130-135F at the thickest part of the shoulder, though public health guidance is 145F; check with a probe rather than trusting the clock, and shorten the oven stage if the fish is already opaque to the bone.
"Lie"French lié, meaning thickened or bound. The name refers to the finishing of the cooking liquid with velouté, not to any thickening of the court bouillon at the start.
The numbered cross-referencesNo. 38 is Ranhofer's court bouillon; No. 415 his velouté; No. 549 his tomato sauce. A modern cook can substitute a light fish velouté made from the reduced poaching liquid, plus a spoonful of tomato passata.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white peppercorns, sifted of dust. Black pepper works but shows as dark specks against pale fish.
Fish kettleA long lidded pan with a perforated lifting grate. A roasting pan with a rack, or the fish wrapped in a double layer of cheesecloth with the ends left long as handles, does the same job: it lets you move six pounds of cooked fish without breaking it.
Oven heatNot stated. The dish is covered with a second dish and is only finishing, so a moderate oven (around 350F) is a reasonable modern choice.
Substitute fishSheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus) reaches good markets on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts but is scarce elsewhere. Black drum, porgy, striped bass or a whole snapper of similar weight all poach the same way.
YieldA six-pound whole fish serves six to eight as a main course. The sauce should stay pourable and glossy — Ranhofer's "rather light than otherwise" means it should coat the fish, not sit on it.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its fish chapters are a good index of what a wealthy American table actually ate: sheepshead, weakfish, blackfish and pompano appear as often as sole and turbot do in contemporary French books. Sheepshead was then a familiar fish in the New York and Chesapeake markets — the name is usually explained by its heavy, sheep-like teeth, which it uses to crush oysters and barnacles — and the fish was esteemed enough that Ranhofer gives it a run of separate preparations. The method itself is straight classical French: poach whole in court bouillon, reduce the liquid, bind it with a mother sauce.