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Halibut, Atlantic City
Place three three-quarter-pound halibut steaks in sautoire with a half ounce butter, half gill white wine, a light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Cover fish with a buttered paper, cook on fire for five minutes, then set in oven for ten minutes. Remove, lift up paper, take up steaks with a skimmer and place on a baking dish. Place a tablespoon melted butter and an ounce flour in a small saucepan, stir on fire for one minute, pour in halibut gravy with a gill milk and half gill cream. Briskly mix on fire until it comes to a boil, then add two ounces cooked ham cut in very small squares, six finely sliced canned mushrooms, a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, thoroughly mix and let boil for ten minutes. Squeeze juice of half a lemon and pour sauce over fish, dredge two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese over all, set in oven for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A hotel-style baked halibut in a ham-and-mushroom cream sauce, gratinéed with Parmesan. The chief problem for a modern cook is the cumulative cooking time, which was written for thicker steaks and a slower oven than most people have.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is 1/4 cup. The ounce of flour is by weight, roughly 1/4 cup; the half ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan with a lid, wide enough to hold the steaks in one layer. Any heavy skillet that can go from burner to oven will do.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For both the initial ten minutes and the final gratin, 375-400F is right; the last stage is about colouring the cheese, not cooking the fish further.
- Total cooking timeFive minutes on the burner, ten in the oven, then fifteen more under sauce will leave steaks of the size sold today dry and chalky. Halibut is lean and firm and goes from set to cottony quickly. Pull the fish while it is just short of opaque at the centre and keep the final gratin short, five to eight minutes under a hot oven or broiler.
- The buttered paperA cartouche: a round of parchment, buttered on one side, laid directly on the fish. It traps steam and keeps the surface from drying while allowing a little evaporation. Foil is not the same thing, though it will serve.
- Halibut gravyThe pan liquid left after the fish is lifted out: wine, butter and the juices the fish has given up. Strain it into the roux; there will be less of it than you expect, which is why milk and cream are added.
- Canned mushroomsCommon in cookbooks of this period, Filippini's included. Fresh cremini sliced thin and sweated in butter first are better; do not add them raw, as they will thin the sauce.
- Sauce consistencyTen minutes at a boil is a long time for a milk-based sauce, but it is what cooks off the raw flour and reduces the sauce enough to coat rather than run. Stir the bottom and lower the heat if it catches.
- YieldThree steaks of three-quarters of a pound each will serve three generously or six as part of a longer menu; the sauce is rich enough that half a steak per person is not mean.
- On the fish itselfAtlantic halibut stocks were reduced severely during the twentieth century and the species is still a poor choice at most fish counters. Pacific halibut is the usual substitute; thick cod or hake loin behaves similarly under this sauce.
The recipe comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906). Filippini was long associated with Delmonico's in New York, though not exclusively, and the book carries the habits of the big American hotel and restaurant kitchens of the period, including their fondness for naming dishes after resorts and cities. Atlantic City was then at its height as a seaside destination, with grand boardwalk hotels running French-trained kitchens, and a garnish of ham, mushrooms, cream and gratinéed Parmesan over a local white fish is exactly the sort of thing such a house would put on a card under the town's name. There is no evidence the dish originated there in any particular kitchen; the geographic label was a menu convention as much as an attribution. The halibut itself is genuine enough, though the recipe specifies only a weight.