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Fried Halibut Steaks, Tartare
Procure three one-pound chicken halibut steaks, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, then lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten egg and roll in bread crumbs. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add steaks one beside another and gently fry six minutes on each side, then set in oven ten minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve with a tartare sauce separately.
A straightforward breaded fish steak, but the cooking times belong to an era of thicker cuts and cooler stoves. The single instruction that matters: halibut is very lean and turns dry and cottony the moment it passes about 135F.
- "Chicken halibut"Not poultry — a market term for a small young halibut, the exact weight range varying by market but well under that of a mature fish, whose cross-cut steaks are tender and modest in size. Any halibut steak about an inch thick works; a one-pound steak that size will span two portions.
- Total cooking timeSix minutes a side plus ten in the oven is far too long for an inch-thick steak. Three to four minutes a side is usually enough, and the oven finish should be a couple of minutes at most, pulled at 130-135F at the centre.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only "set in oven." A moderate oven, around 350F, used only to carry the heat to the middle after the crust has set, suits the method.
- Not enough fatA tablespoon and a half of butter across three steaks will scorch before the crumbs colour. Use clarified butter or a butter-and-neutral-oil mix, enough to film the pan generously, and wipe out any burnt crumbs between batches.
- Breading sequenceFlour, egg, crumbs — the standard order, and it works better if the crumbed steaks rest ten minutes in the refrigerator so the coating adheres in the pan.
- Tartare sauceThe period sauce is mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins, shallot or onion and parsley, sometimes a little mustard. Made with raw yolks in the original; a commercial mayonnaise base avoids the question entirely.
- YieldThree pounds of steak serves six generously. The six lemon quarters in the original may point to the intended number at table, though the recipe does not say so.
- SourcingAtlantic halibut stocks are depleted and the fish is best avoided; Pacific halibut is the usual substitute, and thick cod or hake loin takes the same treatment.
"À la tartare" in the French professional kitchen of this period meant almost exactly what is described here: something breaded and fried, or grilled, and sent to the table with a cold caper-and-gherkin mayonnaise served separately in a sauceboat. The name is traditionally traced to the Tartars, by way of the nineteenth-century French habit of attaching the word to sharp, piquant or raw preparations, but the connection is decorative rather than documented. Halibut steaks cut straight across the fish — bone in the middle, two lobes of white flesh — were a restaurant staple, and one might guess that their firmness in the pan had something to do with it. The recipe's tidy plating, with the steaks laid side by side, lemon quarters and a fringe of parsley, is the hotel dining-room style of the era rather than home cooking.