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Haddock, Meuniere
Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper three three-quarter-pound slices fresh haddock. Heat in a frying pan one and a half tablespoons butter, lightly roll the steaks in flour and add to the pan and fry for six minutes on each side. Lift them up with the skimmer, place on a hot dish, remove the spinal bones, squeeze the juice of a lemon over, sprinkle a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley over all and serve.
A plain, fast fish saute that assumes cross-cut haddock steaks rather than fillets. Two details of the original are worth adjusting before you start: the butter is scant, and the pepper is heavy.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is a half teaspoon of white pepper for three steaks. That is assertive by current taste; a quarter teaspoon is closer to what most cooks want.
- The cut"Three-quarter-pound slices" means bone-in steaks cut across the fish, which is why the recipe tells you to pull the spinal bones afterward. Haddock is now usually sold as fillet rather than steaks; a thick loin portion of about 6-8 oz behaves the same way in the pan but needs no boning.
- More butter, or clarify itA tablespoon and a half will not carry three large steaks. Use 3-4 tablespoons, or clarified butter, or a mix of butter and neutral oil. Whole butter's milk solids scorch at the heat needed to brown fish, and burnt solids are what ruin the flavor.
- FlourRoll the fish in flour immediately before it goes into the pan and shake off the excess. Flour left to sit on wet fish turns to paste and will not brown.
- TimingSix minutes a side suits a thick bone-in steak. Boneless portions of an inch or less need about three to four minutes a side; cook to opaque and just flaking, around 145F at the center. Haddock is lean and goes dry and cottony quickly.
- What meuniere usually meansThe classical version finishes by cooking the pan butter to a nut brown and pouring it over the fish with the lemon and parsley. This recipe leaves that step out. Adding it costs a minute.
- Order of finishingLemon last, off the heat, over fish already on the hot plate. Acid in the pan will loosen the flour coating and dull the browning.
- YieldThree steaks, three servings, with potatoes or spinach alongside.
Meuniere is French for "miller's wife," a name generally traced to the light dusting of flour that defines the method: season, flour, saute in butter, finish with lemon and parsley. It is often said to have been a sole preparation in French restaurant cooking before it was anything else, and the substitution of haddock here is exactly what an American book like this was for. Haddock was the cheap, abundant North Atlantic groundfish of the period, landed in quantity at Boston and Gloucester and sold whole or steaked rather than filleted, which is why the cook is told to lift out the spinal bones on a hot dish in the kitchen. Filleting machines and the boneless portion came later; a fish steak with its backbone in was simply what fish looked like.