No. 1285

Spotted Fish, Queen Sauce-Fillets

Filets de Spotted Fish Sauce a la Reine

Procure a very fresh, well cleaned fish weighing four pounds; remove the fillets, skin, pare, and flatten them with the handle of a knife, lay them on a dish, season with salt, oil and lemon juice, and one hour after, besprinkle with chopped parsley, roll in flour. Dip them in eggs beaten up with melted butter, then in bread-crumbs and broil them for a quarter of an hour, turning them over when done on one side. Serve a hot queen sauce (No. 530) separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a plain breaded broil, and everything hinges on cutting the time down: fifteen minutes over coals suited a thick fillet on a gridiron set well back from the fire, but it will dry out a half-inch fillet under a modern broiler.

TimingFigure 3 to 4 minutes a side under a broiler preheated to high, or on a hot grill, for fillets a half-inch thick. The fish is done when the flesh just parts and reads 130-135F at the center; the crumb coating should be brown before that point, so keep the fillets 4 to 5 inches from the element.
"Spotted fish"The name is not defined here; it is usually taken to mean spotted squeteague, the spotted sea trout or weakfish of the Atlantic coast, though the identification is not certain. Any firm, mild, non-oily white fillet works: sea trout, snapper, black bass, striped bass, or pompano as the section heading suggests.
YieldA four-pound whole fish yields roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb of skinned fillets, enough for four servings. Buying fillets outright, allow 6 to 8 oz per person.
FlatteningTapping the fillets with the flat of a heavy knife handle evens out the thickness so the thin tail end does not overcook. Work gently on a dampened board; the aim is uniform depth, not a paillard.
The hour's marinadeSalt, oil and lemon juice for one hour is the classic pre-broiling seasoning, but lemon acid firms and whitens the surface of delicate fish. Do not extend it much past the hour, and pat the fillets dry before flouring or the coating will slide.
Egg and butter washBeating melted butter into the eggs is deliberate: the fat helps the crumbs brown and crisp without a pan of fat beneath. Use clarified or barely warm butter so it does not scramble the egg, and press the crumbs on firmly.
Bread-crumbsThe book means dry, finely sieved white crumbs, not coarse panko and not seasoned crumbs. Stale crustless bread dried in a low oven and passed through a sieve gives the fine, even coat Ranhofer expects.
Queen sauceNo. 530 is the book's sauce a la reine, a rich white sauce of the velouty/allemande type; enrichment with cream and egg yolks is typical of the family, so if yolks are used the sauce must be held below a simmer or it will break. Serve it warm in a sauceboat as directed rather than over the fish, which would soften the crust.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what came out of the Delmonico's kitchens in New York during his thirty-odd years there, and its fish chapters read like an inventory of the Fulton Market: pompano, red snapper, sheepshead, weakfish and the spotted squeteague all had their own numbered treatments. Sauce a la reine belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire of "white" sauces built on velouty and finished with cream and yolks; the name, like sauce a la dauphine or a la royale, signalled richness and courtly pedigree rather than any documented connection to a particular queen. The structure of the entry is as telling as the dish: a fillet dressed in the standard breading a l'anglaise, broiled, and married to a sauce numbered elsewhere in the book, so that a handful of preparations and a shelf of mother sauces could be recombined into the enormous menus Delmonico's printed nightly.