No. 1282

Spotted Fish a la Livournaise (spotted Fish a la Livournaise

Carefully pare some fillets taken from the fish into half hearts; lay them on a buttered dish and cover over with tomato sauce (No. 549), gravy (No. 405) and a brown sauce (No. 414), the whole reduced to the consistency of a very succulent sauce, but thin. Besprinkle with bread-crumbs, sprinkle over with oil, and bake the fish in a hot oven; when ready to serve, bestrew the surface with chopped parsley and a few pounded fennel seeds.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen that already has three finished sauces standing by; the whole recipe collapses to a simple baked fish once you decide what to put in the dish. The sauce must stay loose — a thick sauce sets into a crust and the fillets steam badly under it.

The three cross-referenced saucesNo. 549 is tomato sauce, No. 405 a meat gravy, No. 414 a brown (espagnole-type) sauce. In a home kitchen, a well-seasoned tomato sauce thinned with a few spoonfuls of good brown stock or reduced pan gravy gives the same effect: tomato-forward, savory, still pourable.
"Reduced but thin"This is the hinge. The sauce is reduced for flavor, then held at a consistency that will just coat a spoon and still run. Too thick and it bakes into a paste over the fillets; too thin and it boils out around them.
Hot ovenRead this as 425–450°F. The dish is meant to be in and out quickly so the crumbs color while the fish is only just set.
TimingRanhofer gives none. Half-inch fillets under sauce need roughly 10–14 minutes; the fish is done when it parts at the flake and reads about 130–135°F. Fish held longer in a tomato sauce goes dry and cottony.
"Half hearts"A trimmed fillet pared to a half-heart shape, one of the decorative fillet cuts of the period. Any uniform portion of similar thickness behaves the same in the oven.
The oilOlive oil, in a Livorno-style dish. Sprinkle it over the crumbs rather than into the sauce so the topping browns instead of poaching.
Pounded fennel seedsToast the seeds briefly and crush them coarsely in a mortar just before serving; ground fennel from a jar is flat by comparison. A pinch is enough — perhaps 1/4 teaspoon for four portions.
The fishAny firm, mild white fillet works: snapper, sea trout, black bass, striped bass, or pollock. Skin the fillets, since the dish is served straight from the baking vessel.
YieldFigure 6 oz of trimmed fillet and about 1/3 cup of sauce per person; the recipe scales directly.

A Little History

"À la livournaise" points to Livorno, the Tuscan port, and in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage it signaled a tomato-based treatment for fish, usually with oil, herbs and a browned crumb surface. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's, arranged The Epicurean (1894) as a working reference rather than a book to read straight through, which is why this entry consists largely of numbers: the sauces at Nos. 549, 405 and 414 were standing preparations in a large hotel kitchen. "Spotted fish" is Ranhofer's plain-English name for one of the speckled Atlantic food fishes then sold in New York markets — often identified as the spotted weakfish or sea trout, though the identification is not certain — and it appears here among the American species in his French repertoire. The pounded fennel seed at the end is the Italian signature the name promises, added off the heat so its perfume survives.