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Bluefish, Norwegienne
Neatly trim a three-pound piece fresh bluefish, place in a large frying pan with a half gill white wine, two gills demi-glace, juice of quarter of lemon, one ounce butter, half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne pepper. Cover fish with buttered paper, boil five minutes on range, then set in oven twenty-five minutes. Remove, dress fish on a dish. Strain sauce through a cheesecloth into a saucepan, boil five minutes, then add a tablespoon freshly grated horseradish, two tablespoons capers, four anchovies in oil cut in small pieces, and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley; mix well, boil three minutes, pour over fish and serve with six heart-shaped bread croutons, around the fish.
A French classical treatment applied to an American fish. Nearly everything here is workable in a modern kitchen once the measures and the oven heat are pinned down.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of wine is 1/4 cup and two gills of demi-glace is 1 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon — cayenne at that level is seasoning, not heat.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only 'set in oven'. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading, but it is an inference rather than anything the book states: the pan has already come to a boil on the range and only needs to be held there.
- Watch the timing, not the clockTwenty-five minutes in a moderate oven may well take a three-pound bluefish piece past done, depending on the thickness of the cut. Bluefish is commonly taken off at 135-140F at the thickest point, though standard US food-safety guidance for fish is 145F. Start checking well before the full twenty-five minutes and pull it when the flesh flakes and is just opaque.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche — a round of parchment cut to the pan and buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It keeps the surface moist without steaming it into mush. Foil is a poor substitute because it traps too much.
- Demi-glaceClassically, espagnole sauce combined with brown (veal) stock and reduced down — the one ingredient a home cook is unlikely to have. Good jarred demi-glace works; a well-reduced dark veal or beef stock is the fallback. Avoid commercial gravy base, which is largely salt and will over-season the sauce after the second reduction.
- Horseradish at the endGrate it fresh and add it in the last three minutes as written. Its pungency is volatile and fades quickly with heat, so a late addition preserves it; the recipe itself gives no reason for the order.
- Anchovies and saltFour oil-packed anchovies plus capers plus a reduced demi-glace is a lot of salt arriving at once. Hold back the half teaspoon of salt at the start and season the sauce at the very end instead.
- CroutonsCut heart shapes from firm white bread and fry in clarified butter until golden. Add them only at the moment of serving, or the sauce will soften them.
- YieldThree pounds of fish with a cup of sauce serves four generously, six as part of a longer meal.
The name is suggestive, though less settled than it looks: à la norvégienne is sometimes taken to signal northern flavours — horseradish, anchovy, capers — set against a rich brown sauce, but the term was never fixed in the classical repertoire, where it more often attaches to a cold egg-and-oil sauce. Bluefish, by contrast, is thoroughly American: an oily, assertive Atlantic fish that was cheap and abundant along the eastern seaboard and appears constantly in New York cookery of the period. Pairing it with a demi-glace and a French garnish is the sort of move associated with the Manhattan restaurant kitchens of the late nineteenth century, where French-trained chefs applied the classical repertoire to whatever the local market supplied. The oiliness of bluefish is the reason the combination works — horseradish, capers and anchovy all cut through fat, and the fish needs cutting.