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Broiled Butter Fish
Thoroughly wipe six very fresh butterfish. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, repeatedly roll in the seasoning, arrange on a broiler and broil for five minutes on each side, remove, dress on a dish, spread a little maitre d'hotel butter over and serve.
A four-line recipe that depends almost entirely on the fish being fresh and the heat being fierce. The seasoning is nothing more than oil, salt and white pepper; everything else is timing.
- The broiler meant hereIn 1906 this would most often have been a hinged double wire broiler held over coals, though the broiling compartment of a coal or gas range was also in use. Under a modern overhead broiler, preheat it fully, set the rack about four inches from the element, and lay the fish on an oiled rack over a pan so the fat drips clear.
- Cut the timeFive minutes a side suits a fish held over uneven coals. A cleaned butterfish is small, commonly a few ounces and under an inch thick at the shoulder; three minutes a side under a hot broiler is usually enough, and the flesh should just part from the backbone.
- Wipe, do not washThe instruction is deliberate. A dry surface takes the oil evenly and browns; a wet one steams. Pat both sides and the cavity with paper towel before seasoning.
- Buying the fishAtlantic butterfish (also sold as dollarfish; the related harvestfish is sometimes marketed under the same name) appear at fishmongers in late summer and autumn, usually whole and gutted. The scales are tiny and need no removal. Small pompano, fresh sardines or small mackerel broil the same way.
- Maitre d'hotel butterNo formula is given at this point in the recipe: soften butter and work in chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and a little white pepper, then chill. Roughly a tablespoon of parsley and two teaspoons of lemon juice to four tablespoons of butter. Put it on cold so it melts over the hot fish at the table.
- Oil quantityOne tablespoon for six fish is thin coverage. Two is more realistic if you are rolling each fish on the plate, and the excess burns off rather than pooling.
- YieldSix fish serves three as a main course, or six as a first course with bread and lemon.
Butterfish were a cheap, abundant inshore catch along the American Atlantic coast when Alexander Filippini compiled The International Cook Book in 1906, landed in quantity in summer and sold small and whole. Filippini had spent years at Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe carries the restaurant habit of his generation: minimal seasoning, hard direct heat, and a compound butter to finish, a treatment he gives to other small and oily fish in the book. Maitre d'hotel butter -- butter worked with parsley and lemon -- was a standard item of professional kitchens of the period, which is why it appears here as a bare instruction. The fish itself is oily enough to survive a broiler without a coating of flour or crumbs, and the name is generally taken to refer to the soft, rich flesh rather than to any butter used in cooking it.