No. 1263

Skate a la Lechartier

Raie a la Lechartier

Suppress the fins and wash a medium-sized skate, after having emptied it, divide it into three parts, the two wings and the body; lay these in cold water of a sufficient quantity to cover entirely, then add salt, pepper, vinegar, sliced onions and parsley leaves. Set the fish boiler on the fire removing it at the first boil, put in the liver and keep it on one side without letting it boil for full half an hour, drain off the fish, scrape it well on both sides in order to remove the skin properly. Put into the bottom of a baking dish a bed of cooked fine herbs (No 385), on this the skate with the sliced liver around; cover all with a well reduced bechamel (No. 409), into which has been stirred a little melted fish glaze (No. 399); besprinkle with grated parmesan, bread-crumbs or raspings and chopped parsley, the whole well mixed together; pour over a little butter and bake in the oven. When serving squeeze on the juice of a lemon.

← No. 1262 Sheepshead with Thickened Court Bouillon Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1264 Skate, with Hazelnut or Black Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a whole skate and a fish kettle; most cooks today will buy wings alone. The rest translates cleanly, provided the fish is cooked gently and the gratin is browned fast.

The hinge: never let it boilThe fish goes into cold court bouillon, comes to one boil, and is then held off the heat for half an hour. Skate flesh is fibrous and shreds into strings if it simmers; keep the liquid at 160-175F and it stays in clean sheets.
Buy wings, adjust the timingRanhofer's half hour is for a whole medium skate cut into three pieces, the two wings and the body, poached together. Trimmed wings of 8-12 oz are done in 8-12 minutes of the same off-heat poaching; test by whether the flesh lifts from the cartilage.
Ammonia and freshnessSkate carries urea in its flesh, which turns to ammonia as it ages. A faint smell disappears in cooking; a strong one means the fish is past use. Vinegar in the poaching liquid is often said to help with this, though Ranhofer gives no reason for including it.
The liverSkate liver is rich and excellent, and almost never sold at retail in the United States. Ask a whole-fish supplier, or leave it out and lay poached wing meat where the sliced liver would have gone.
Cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Ranhofer's cooked fine herbs amount to a loose duxelles, mushroom and shallot with parsley; check No. 385 for his exact formula. Any well-dried mushroom-and-shallot mixture serves; wet herbs will thin the sauce.
Fish glaze (No. 399)Glace de poisson is fish fumet reduced to a syrup. Reduce a cup of fish stock to a tablespoon or two and stir that into the bechamel; a teaspoon of it is enough to carry the whole dish.
RaspingsRaspings are the browned crust of a stale loaf grated fine, drier and darker than fresh crumbs. Oven-dried breadcrumbs are the closest substitute.
Baking the gratinThe sauce and fish are already cooked, so the oven only browns the top: 425F for 10-15 minutes, or two to three minutes under the broiler. Longer and the bechamel breaks and the skate dries.
YieldOne medium skate as written feeds four to six as a main course. Squeeze the lemon at the table, not before, or the sauce dulls.

A Little History

Skate ran cheap in nineteenth-century markets on both sides of the Atlantic, and French cookery earned its reputation partly by making something of it: raie au beurre noir, the dish that follows this one in Ranhofer's book, was standard bistro fare. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across two spells spanning roughly three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete cross-referenced system, which is why this recipe reads as a set of instructions plus three numbers pointing elsewhere in the volume. The name honors a person, as hundreds of Ranhofer's titles do, though the Lechartier behind it is not securely identified; the pattern of naming a garnished, gratinated preparation after a patron or colleague was the house style. Note the treatment of the liver, poached separately and sliced around the fish.