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Broiled Bluefish, Maitre D'Hotel
Have a three-pound piece of fresh bluefish; bone it nicely, trim, clean and neatly wipe dry. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Lightly oil the surface with a tablespoon oil. Arrange on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish. Spread a maitre d'hotel butter over and serve with quartered lemons around the dish.
A plain broiled fish with a compound butter, written for a coal-fired gridiron and a cook who already knew what maître d'hôtel butter was. Two things need translating: the broiling arrangement and the butter itself.
- The butter is the recipeMaître d'hôtel butter is softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice and a little salt and white pepper — roughly 4 tablespoons butter to a tablespoon of parsley and two teaspoons of juice. Chill it into a log, slice coins onto the hot fish, and let it melt at the table rather than melting it in advance.
- "Broiler" here means a hinged wire gridiron"Broiler" here most likely means a hinged wire gridiron: the fish went between two wire grids over live coals, cooked from below and flipped — though gas ranges with overhead broiling burners were also in use by this date. Under a modern overhead broiler there is no need to turn a fillet at all: skin down, 4 to 6 inches from the element, and leave it.
- Six minutes a side is for a thick split fishA three-pound piece boned and split runs well over an inch thick, which is what that timing suits. Market bluefish fillets are usually thinner and will want less, roughly 5 to 8 minutes total. Cook to 145F, or until the flesh separates into flakes at the thickest part.
- Bluefish is an oily fish and turns fastIts fat oxidises quickly and the flavour goes strong and metallic within a couple of days. Buy it the day you cook it, and if the fillet has a dark red-brown strip of bloodline down the centre, trim it out — it carries most of the pronounced flavour people object to.
- OilingA tablespoon of oil for three pounds of fish is sparing but correct; the fish renders plenty of its own fat. Oil the grill rack too, or the skin will weld to it.
- Seasoning quantityA teaspoon of salt across three pounds is on the light side by modern taste. Salt 15 minutes ahead so it draws in rather than sitting on the surface.
- YieldThree pounds of boned fish serves four generously, six as part of a larger meal. Filippini's menus assumed several courses.
Bluefish was a cheap, abundant Atlantic fish in the American Northeast at the turn of the century, landed in quantity through the summer and sold fresh in coastal markets because it did not keep or ship well — which is exactly why a restaurant cook treated it simply, broiled and buttered, rather than sauced. The finish is standard French kitchen grammar: beurre maître d'hôtel, butter worked with parsley and lemon, is a familiar compound butter and appears in nineteenth-century French manuals as one standard dressing for grilled fish and steaks. Pairing an American market fish with a Parisian butter is the whole premise of a book called The International Cook Book, written by a chef whose career ran through Delmonico's, where continental technique was applied to whatever came off the local boats.