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Broiled Pomano
Procure two very fresh medium pompano of about one and a half pounds each; wipe them thoroughly. Roll in a tablespoon oil on a plate. Season on both sides with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoon white pepper, arrange them on a broiler and broil for five minutes each side. Dress on a hot dish. Spread a little maitre d'hotel butter over. Decorrate the dish with parsley greens and six small pieces of lemon and serve.
A plain broiled fish that depends entirely on freshness and on not overcooking. The original assumes a coal-fired broiler with a hinged wire basket and a cook who splits the fish first.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two of them is half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is a generous amount for two fish; season to your own taste.
- Prepare the fishThe recipe omits it, but the fish would have been scaled and gutted, and period restaurant practice for broiling pompano often called for splitting down the back or butterflying. Left whole and unscored, a fish this thick is unlikely to cook through in five minutes a side.
- Heat and timingUnder a modern overhead broiler set high, with the rack about 4 inches from the element, a split pompano takes roughly 4-6 minutes skin side down and 3-4 minutes on the flesh side. Cook to about 140°F at the thickest point, or until the flesh just parts from the bone.
- The broiler basketThe broiler -- "Arrange them on a broiler" refers to a hand broiler or gridiron; some were double-sided hinged grills that let the fish be flipped without breaking. If you have none, broil skin side down on an oiled rack and do not turn the fish at all.
- Maître d'hôtel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper — about 4 tablespoons butter, a tablespoon of parsley and two teaspoons of juice for two fish. Add it off the heat so it melts over the fish rather than frying.
- PompanoFlorida pompano is a Gulf and South Atlantic fish and is often sold whole at 1-2 lb. Where it is not available, small permit or a whole black bass of similar weight broils the same way; oily fish like mackerel behave differently.
- YieldTwo fish of this size serve two as a main course, or four as part of a longer menu of the kind this book assumes.
Pompano was one of the prestige fish of American hotel and restaurant cooking around 1900 — shipped north on ice from the Gulf, priced accordingly, and treated with the deliberate plainness reserved for expensive ingredients: oil, salt, fire, and a compound butter. Maître d'hôtel butter, parsley and lemon worked into softened butter, was a standard French finish for grilled fish and steak in professional kitchens of the period, and it appears throughout books written by chefs who trained in that system. The same fish in New Orleans was often baked in a paper case, a preparation generally traced to Antoine's.