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Fried Filets of Flounder, Remoulade Sauce
Make an incision on both sides of a fresh three-pound flounder; carefully lift up the filets, skin well and cut into three equal slanting pieces. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; roll well in the seasoning, lightly turn in flour, then in beaten egg and finally in bread crumbs. Place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for five minutes. Lift up and thoroughly drain on a cloth. Dredge half teaspoon salt over, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with parsley greens and six sections of lemon and serve with a remoulade sauce in a saucebowl separately.
A straightforward deep-fry, but the original assumes you can fillet a flat fish and that you own a frying basket. Two things need attention: the fat temperature, which the recipe gives only as "boiling," and the five-minute fry, which is generous for thin fillets.
- "Boiling fat" means 350-375FFat does not boil; the phrase is period shorthand for hot enough that a crumb sizzles and browns at once. Use a thermometer and hold 365F, letting the oil recover between batches.
- Five minutes is too longA skinned flounder fillet cut in three is perhaps half an inch at its thickest. Breaded and fried at 365F it is done in two to three minutes, when the crust is a light amber. Five minutes gives you a dry interior under a dark shell.
- A three-pound flounderThat yields four fillets, two per side, and roughly a pound of trimmed flesh once skinned — two generous servings or three modest ones. Any flatfish works: fluke, dab, sole, or plaice. If you buy fillets outright, get about 1 lb and cut them on the bias into pieces of similar size.
- Lifting the filetsThe "incision on both sides" is the cut down the backbone. Run a thin flexible blade along the spine and out over the ribs to free each fillet, then skin by pinning the tail end and drawing the knife between skin and flesh at a shallow angle.
- The breading order mattersSalt and pepper first and let it sit a moment, then flour, egg, crumbs, in that sequence and no other. Flour dries the surface so the egg grips; skip it and the crumbs slide off in the fat. Press the crumbs on and fry promptly.
- Remoulade is not given hereThe book expects you to know it. In the French sense of this period it is mayonnaise sharpened with mustard and stiffened with chopped capers, gherkins, parsley, chervil and tarragon, sometimes a little anchovy — not the paprika-red Louisiana sauce of the same name. Make it ahead; it improves in an hour.
- Drain on a rack, not a clothA cloth traps steam under the fillet and softens the crust on the underside. A wire rack over a sheet pan keeps it crisp, and the final half teaspoon of salt should go on while the surface is still glistening.
- The folded napkinFormal service laid fried fish on a napkin folded on the platter to absorb any remaining fat. It is decorative now rather than functional; parchment or nothing at all serves as well.
Fried fillets with a cold sharp sauce served apart is a standard restaurant treatment of flatfish in this period, and the phrasing here — dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with parsley greens and six sections of lemon — reads as hotel-kitchen language transcribed for the household cook. Flounder was cheap and abundant along the American Atlantic coast, which is why a three-pound fish could be offered as an unremarkable purchase. Remoulade appears in French cookery before mayonnaise-based versions came to dominate, and the word is often traced to a dialect term for horseradish. The name later attached to a separate Creole sauce in New Orleans, so a modern reader meeting "remoulade" in a French-trained cookbook of this period should reach for the mayonnaise version.