No. 1309

Weakfish a la Pontigny

Raise the fillets from weakfish; pare them into oval shaped slices and lay in a buttered sautoir; moisten with mirepoix stock (No. 419) with red wine, and let come to a boil, then set the pan into the oven; when the fish is cooked, drain off the stock, and reduce it with an equal quanity of espagnole sauce (No. 414), adding a garnishing of mushrooms, round soubise quenelles, crawfish tails or else shrimps. Dress the slice overlapping with the garnishing around and reduce well the sauce; stir into it some maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581), pour it over, and surround the whole with crotuons of bread fried in butter.

← No. 1308 Weakfish a la Brighton Bass, Blackfish & Bluefish No. 1310 Whitebait Fried Greenwich Style and Deviled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, espagnole and compound butters standing by, so the recipe is really an assembly order. The work is in the components; the fish itself takes ten minutes.

The hinge: do not overcook the filletsWeakfish flesh is soft and breaks down fast. Ranhofer gives neither a temperature nor a time, only "set the pan into the oven"; in a moderate oven, oval-pared slices in a shallow buttered pan with a small amount of liquid need roughly 8 to 10 minutes. They are done when the flesh just loses its translucence; the sauce reduction is what should be given time, not the fish.
WeakfishCynoscion regalis, also sold as squeteague or grey trout on the Atlantic coast. If it is not at your counter, any lean white fish that yields a thick fillet works here — sea bass, drum, corvina or striped bass. Avoid a flaky, thin-fleshed fish, which will collapse when you lift the cooked slices.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow sauté pan. Any wide ovenproof pan that holds the fillets in one layer will do; depth is the enemy, since the point is to poach in a small amount of liquid that later becomes the sauce.
Mirepoix stock (No. 419)In The Epicurean this is a braising liquid built on diced carrot, onion, celery and ham or bacon sweated in butter with herbs, moistened and simmered. A well-flavoured fish or light veal stock with a few tablespoons of mirepoix cooked in it approximates it closely enough for one dish.
Espagnole (No. 414)The classic brown sauce: brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, simmered and strained over hours. A good reduced brown veal stock lightly thickened is the practical stand-in. Note that this is a brown sauce over fish, which was standard in nineteenth-century French service and no longer is.
Soubise quenellesSmall forcemeat dumplings bound with a heavy onion purée (soubise), poached and rolled round. They are the fussiest element; small poached fish quenelles or simply glazed pearl onions give a similar effect on the plate if you do not want to make forcemeat.
Maître d'hôtel butter (No. 581)Butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Whisk it in cold, off the heat, once the sauce is fully reduced — it will break if the sauce boils afterward.
Crawfish tails or shrimpCooked and peeled, added at the end only to heat through. A minute in the finished sauce is enough; longer and they tighten.
YieldThe original gives none. Two whole weakfish of 2 to 3 lb yield four fillets, pared down to roughly four servings once trimmed to ovals; keep the trimmings for the quenelles or stock.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book's fish chapters show him doing something specific: taking the ordinary catch of the American Atlantic — weakfish, blackfish, bluefish, all cheap and abundant in the New York markets of the period — and dressing it in the full apparatus of Parisian grande cuisine. The weakfish's unflattering name is often traced to its tender mouth, which tears easily on the hook, though a derivation from the Dutch weekvisch has also been offered; it was also sold as squeteague, from a southern New England Algonquian word. Dish names like "à la Pontigny" recur in Ranhofer by the hundred and functioned as a menu vocabulary rather than a history: some honour patrons or places, many were simply coined to distinguish one garnish and sauce combination from the next, and no origin story should be assumed for this one. What the recipe does record precisely is the era's taste for brown sauce with fish, a red-wine braise finished with espagnole and compound butter, which later French practice largely abandoned in favour of lighter fish-stock reductions.