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Broiled Blackfish, Maitre D'Hotel
Scale, trim and wipe two fresh blackfish of one and a half pounds each. Make three small incisions on skin of both sides of each. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil with a teaspoon salt and half a teaspoon white pepper; repeatedly turn fish in seasoning, then place on broiler and broil on a brisk fire eight minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a dish, pour a maitre d'hotel sauce over, decorate with a little parsley greens and six quarters of lemon and serve.
A plain gridiron recipe of the kind the big hotel kitchens turned out by the dozen: whole fish, hot fire, seasoned butter. Two things need translating — the fish itself and what "broiler" meant in 1929.
- Blackfish means tautogOn the American Atlantic coast this is Tautoga onitis, a firm-fleshed wrasse caught around rocks and wrecks. It is now regulated, with seasons and size limits in the states where it is fished, and the commercial catch is small — it turns up chiefly in live-fish markets rather than on the general fish counter; black sea bass, porgy, striped bass or any firm 1½-lb whole white fish behaves the same on the fire.
- "Broiler" is a gridiron'A brisk fire' places this over live coals rather than under a modern overhead element: heat from below, on a gridiron or in a hinged wire fish grill, with the cook turning the fish. A charcoal or gas grill is the direct equivalent. Under an overhead oven broiler you cannot turn a whole fish cleanly, so use the highest rack and expect to lose some skin.
- Brisk fireCoals burned down to a glow with no flame, hot enough that you can hold a hand 4 inches above the grate for only two or three seconds. Sixteen minutes total for a 1½-lb whole fish is about right on that heat; test at the thickest point behind the head, or go by the flesh parting from the backbone. Cooks aiming for a just-set result work to 130–135°F, though the USDA/FDA recommendation for finfish is 145°F.
- The three incisionsThe recipe asks for three small cuts in the skin on each side. Scoring the skin lets the seasoning in, helps the thick shoulder cook through, and keeps the skin from tightening and splitting the fish as it contracts over the fire. Worth doing on any whole round fish.
- Oil the fish, oil the grateA tablespoon of oil for two fish is barely enough to carry the seasoning. Brush the grill bars as well, and get them hot before the fish goes down, or the skin welds on.
- Maître d'hôtel sauceUsually a compound butter rather than a cooked sauce: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and white pepper. 'Pour over' here means putting it on the hot fish and letting it melt into a sauce on the platter; melting it in a pan first tends to separate it.
- White pepperThe recipe gives no reason, but the usual explanation is cosmetic: no black specks on pale fish and pale butter. Black pepper tastes fine and looks different.
- YieldTwo 1½-lb whole fish serve four generously, or two as a full main course in the older style. The six lemon quarters are garnish rather than a guide to the number of covers.
Blackfish, or tautog, was a working New York and New England market fish in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — cheap, abundant on rocky inshore ground, and firm enough to hold together on a gridiron, which many softer inshore fish will not. Maître d'hôtel butter is the most basic of the French compound butters, its name generally traced to the head of the dining room rather than the kitchen, and it functioned in hotel cooking as the default finish for anything grilled: parsley, lemon, butter, and nothing else to make. Pairing a local market fish with a standard French garnish is exactly the register of a book like this one, written for cooks shopping at American docks, where the printed name of the fish changed from coast to coast.