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Broiled Perch, Mustard Sauce
Neatly trim and wipe dry six very fresh, small perch. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper; repeatedly roll the perch in the seasoning, then arrange on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, pour a mustard sauce over, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A terse professional note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you can scale and gut a small fish, and that a mustard sauce is already standing in the kitchen. Two things need attention before you start — the timing and the missing sauce.
- The timing is for a coal gridironThe timing is long by modern standards -- Six minutes a side suits a whole fish turned over a slow fire. Under a modern gas or electric broiler at full heat, a whole 6-8 oz perch needs roughly 4 minutes a side, and fillets 3 to 4 minutes total. The fish is done when the flesh at the backbone loses its translucency.
- "Broiler" here is the rack"Broiler" here is probably the rack -- In 1906 the word could mean either the hinged wire gridiron that holds the fish and is turned bodily over the fire, or the broiling compartment of a range; the recipe does not say which. Set your oven rack about 4 inches from the element and use a well-oiled rack over a sheet pan so the skin does not weld itself down.
- Trimming means more than trimmingPerch are heavily scaled with sharp dorsal spines and a tough skin. Scale, gut, snip the spiny fin, and dry the fish thoroughly — surface water steams rather than browns, and the seasoned oil will not cling.
- The seasoning quantities are generousA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for six small fish is about right when it is rolled on and much of it falls away, but if you are seasoning fillets directly, halve it.
- The mustard sauce is not givenFilippini expected the cook to know it: a light velouté or melted butter finished with Dijon or English mustard, lemon and chopped parsley, never boiled after the mustard goes in or it turns bitter and grainy. A mustard-worked beurre maître d'hôtel melting over the hot fish does the same job with less work.
- Fish substitutionYellow perch run small and are sold whole; European perch likewise. Small trout, bream, croaker or any pan-sized firm white fish of 6-8 oz takes the same treatment.
- YieldSix small perch serve three as a main course, or six as a first course with the lemon quarters and parsley as the whole garnish.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes read like a professional's index card file — the barest sequence of actions, with sauces assumed rather than repeated. Perch belongs to the older freshwater tradition that American and European cooking still shared at the turn of the century: a small, bony, abundant fish taken from lakes and rivers, cooked whole and simply, with the sauce carrying the interest. The pairing of mustard with grilled fish is long-standing in French cookery, where sauce moutarde and grilled herring or mackerel are a traditional match; mustard's sharpness cuts oily flesh and props up lean flesh. The six lemon quarters and the parsley are a conventional garniture of the period.