Home › The World's Kitchen › Black Bass, Bretonne
Black Bass, Bretonne
Procure a fresh black bass of three pounds. Scale, trim off fins and thoroughly wipe. Cut in short julienne strips two small red carrots and two branches celery, place in a large frying pan with an ounce butter and cook five minutes. Lay fish on top, and season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Pour in a half gill white wine and one and a half gills tomato sauce add six finely sliced canned mushrooms. Cover fish with buttered paper, boil five minutes on range, then set in oven thirty minutes. Remove, take off paper, dress fish on a hot dish. Boil sauce five minutes, pour it over fish, arrange six heart-shaped bread croutons around the dish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over and serve.
A braised whole fish in the classic French manner, written for a cook who already knows how to fold a paper lid. Two things need translating: the measurements and the fish itself.
- GillsA gill is a quarter-pint, so half a cup. Half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup; one and a half gills of tomato sauce is 3/4 cup.
- Black bassIn an American book of this date this most likely means the freshwater game fish, largemouth or smallmouth, though the name was also applied in some markets to the black sea bass. Largemouth and smallmouth are game fish and rarely reach the counter in the US. Black sea bass, striped bass or a pair of small branzino give the same firm white flesh in a market-bought fish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Moderate, 350F, is right for this kind of covered braise; the liquid should stay at a bare simmer rather than boiling around the fish.
- The timing is longFive minutes on the range plus thirty in the oven will take a 3 lb fish well past done. Modern practice is 20 to 25 minutes total at 350F, until the flesh at the backbone reaches about 135F and lifts cleanly from the bone. Check early.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered on the underside and laid directly on the fish. It traps steam without sealing the pan, so the sauce still reduces. Foil is not the same thing.
- Canned mushroomsCommonly called for in professional recipes of the period and unnecessary now. Six sliced fresh cremini, added with the wine, will do more for the sauce. Fresh mushrooms release liquid, so reduce the finished sauce a minute longer.
- The croutonsCut heart shapes from firm white bread and fry them in butter until crisp — they are there to be dipped in the sauce and should be made while the fish rests, not in advance.
- YieldA 3 lb whole fish serves three, or four modestly once the carrots, celery and croutons are counted.
Bretonne in the French professional repertoire pulls in two directions: with meat it generally means a garnish of haricot beans, while with fish it means a white-wine braise finished with a fine julienne of root vegetables and mushrooms — the sense used here. What is distinctly American is the fish and the tomato sauce: black bass was a prized freshwater catch on hotel and club menus of the period, and local ingredients were expected to be fitted into continental formulas. The buttered paper lid is a technique for gentle moist cooking that still does the job well.