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Halibut, Aurore
Place three slices fresh halibut of three-quarters of a pound each in a frying pan with half ounce butter, half gill white wine and one gill water. Season with one teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper; cover the fish with a sheet of buttered paper, boil on the range for five minutes, then set in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, lift up the paper, and with a skimmer take up the fish, place on a hot dish, remove the spinal bones, and keep hot till required.
Heat in a small saucepan three-quarters of an ounce butter, add and stir in two tablespoons flour and heat for one minute. Then strain in the fish liquor, adding half gill hot milk; mix gently until it comes to a boil. Add two finely chopped hard-boiled eggs and boil for a minute longer, lightly mixing with a wooden spoon meanwhile. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.
A straightforward braise-and-nap dish from the era when fish was cooked far longer than we would tolerate. The measurements translate cleanly; the timing does not.
- Cut back the cooking timeModern practice takes halibut steaks of this size off the heat at an internal 130-135F (official guidance is 145F), which is roughly 10-12 minutes total in the pan and oven rather than the 25 minutes given. Held to the original schedule the flesh separates into dry flakes and the sauce cannot rescue it.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons of cayenne a full half teaspoon for three steaks: assertive, and worth halving unless you want real heat.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given. Use 375F, which matches the intent of finishing a dish already brought to a boil on the range.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche. Cut a round of parchment the width of the pan, butter one side, and lay it directly on the fish so it traps steam and keeps the top from drying. The pan lid is not a substitute; the paper sits on the fish itself.
- Sauce consistencyThree-quarters of an ounce of butter is about 1 1/2 tablespoons, and with 2 tablespoons flour against roughly 3/4 cup of combined fish liquor and milk the result is thick. Loosen with more hot milk until it coats a spoon and still flows.
- Strain and taste the fish liquorThe braising liquid carries much of the salt and cayenne from the fish, so it seasons the sauce for you. Taste before adding any more salt, and reduce the strained liquor slightly if it seems weak.
- The eggs go in at the endChopped hard-boiled egg should only be warmed through. A full minute at a boil while stirring breaks the whites into rags; fold them in off the heat and serve at once.
- YieldThree bone-in steaks of 3/4 pound each serve four generously, or six as a first course. Lift with a skimmer or a wide slotted spatula, as the cooked fish will not hold together on a fork.
Sauce Aurore takes its name from the French for dawn, and in classical kitchens it means a white sauce tinted rosy, usually with tomato, as codified in the Escoffier tradition. Here the sauce is coloured without tomato, and the dish is finished with chopped hard-boiled egg. The dish is typical of the hotel and restaurant cookery that filled American compendia of the early 1900s: a firm white fish braised in wine and water under buttered paper, then napped with a roux sauce built from the cooking liquid so nothing is wasted.