No. 832

Turbot or Red Snapper Marinated

Turbot ou Red Snapper Marine

Mince up some onions, put them in a sautoire with a piece of butter, adding a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, a few cloves of garlic, white pepper, grated nutmeg, ground pepper and salt. Fry them slightly in the butter, then add some Sauterne wine, and let simmer for one hour; pass the liquid through a fine sieve, then return to the pan-pan; add to it either some turbot or red snapper, cover well, and set it in the oven for thirty minutes; remove from the saucepan to cool in a deep dish, with the liquid covering the fish, then drain and dress the fish, pour some of the liquid over and garnish with sliced lemon.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade and leaves out quantities entirely; the method matters more than the numbers here. The dish is a cold court-bouillon fish, and the hinge is that the fish cools in its own liquid rather than being chilled dry.

Quantities to work fromFor about 2 lb of fish: 2 large onions minced, 2 oz butter, 3 cloves garlic, a bouquet of parsley with thyme and a bay leaf, and a full bottle (750 ml) of Sauternes. Ranhofer gives neither quantities nor a reduction target for the hour of simmering.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, not a saute pan with flaring sides. Any wide pan that will hold the fish in one layer and go into the oven will do.
"Pan-pan"Apparently a slip, in typesetting or transcription, for "pan" or "saucepan." The liquid is strained and returned to the same vessel.
Oven temperatureRanhofer gives none. Set 325-350F; the liquid should barely tremble, never boil, or the flesh shreds and the marinade clouds.
Thirty minutes is for a whole fishThirty minutes suits a thick piece -- The timing fits a whole turbot or a good-sized snapper; the recipe does not say which cut is meant. Fillets or steaks an inch thick will be done in about 10-12 minutes at the same temperature. Overcooked white fish turns cottony and will not hold up to the cooling stage.
SauternesThe sweet Bordeaux is not a misprint; "Sauterne" without the final s was the usual nineteenth-century American spelling, and the name was also applied loosely to white wines that had nothing to do with Sauternes. A dry or off-dry white gives a cleaner result; a genuinely sweet Sauternes makes the finished liquid noticeably sugary against the fish.
White pepper and ground pepperThe original lists both, without explaining the duplication. A teaspoon of white pepper alone is plenty for this quantity.
The cooling stepLeave the fish fully submerged in the liquid until cold, ideally overnight in the refrigerator. This is where the seasoning goes into the flesh. If the fish is whole, with its skin and bones, the liquid may set to a light jelly, which suits the instruction to pour some of it over at serving.
Yield and servingTwo pounds of fish serves four to six as a cold first course. Serve it cold but not straight from the refrigerator, with the lemon and a little of the jellied liquid; mayonnaise or a green sauce alongside is period-appropriate.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that service, which is why the book carries a long chapter of cold side dishes: the buffet and the summer luncheon table demanded fish that could be cooked in the morning and dressed hours later. Marinating in this sense is the older meaning of the word, closer to the Spanish escabeche and the Italian in carpione than to a modern pre-cooking soak, and its point was preservation before it was flavour, since fish held in an acidulated or wine-based liquor kept a day or two longer than fish that did not. Turbot, the prestige flatfish of European kitchens, had to be imported or done without in America, and Ranhofer's habit of naming a domestic fish in the same breath, here the Gulf red snapper, shows him translating a Paris repertoire onto what the Fulton Market could actually supply.