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Halibut, Italienne
Place two slices fresh halibut of one and a half pounds each in a frying pan with half ounce butter, half gill white wine, half gill water, half a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons paprika. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper, boil on the range for five minutes, then set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, place the halibut in a baking dish, take out the spine bone, pour a sauce Italienne and sprinkle a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over, then set in the oven to bake again for fifteen minutes. Remove, decorate all around the fish with slices of lemon and serve.
A classical French treatment filed under Italy, and the timings belong to an era when fish was cooked through and then some. The sauce is assumed rather than given.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup each of white wine and water. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon; two of them make 1/2 teaspoon paprika.
- Sauce ItalienneNot given here. The classical version is a brown sauce (demi-glace) finished with a duxelles of finely chopped mushrooms and shallots, white wine, tomato and chopped fine herbs. Make it before the fish goes in the pan, since the fish will not wait.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given. Moderate, 350F, suits both the covered stage and the final gratin; the cheese needs only to color.
- The timing is the problemFive minutes on the range plus twenty in the oven plus fifteen more is roughly forty minutes for steaks that are done in ten to twelve. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony past 130-135F at the center. Poach the steaks in the wine and butter only until the flesh is just opaque, then hold the second bake to the few minutes it takes the Parmesan to brown.
- The buttered paperA cartouche of parchment cut to the pan and buttered on the underside keeps the surface from drying and the fish from taking on color. Press it directly onto the fish rather than laying it across the rim.
- Two slices, not filletsThese are crosswise steaks cut on the bone, a pound and a half each. The spine bone lifts out once the fish is cooked, which is when the recipe has you remove it.
- YieldThree pounds of halibut on the bone serves four generously, six at a dinner with several courses.
"Italienne" in this book means the classical French sauce of that name rather than anything from an Italian kitchen: brown sauce bound with a duxelles of mushroom and shallot, sharpened with white wine and tomato. Alexander Filippini compiled The International Cook Book in 1906, and by then a chef could write "pour a sauce Italienne" and expect to be understood. Filippini had spent years at Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe carries the marks of that restaurant style: a fish poached under paper, the spine bone lifted out mid-preparation, then gratinéed with Parmesan and ringed with lemon so it arrives looking finished. Halibut suited the method because it reached eastern American markets in thick bone-in steaks, sturdy enough to be cooked twice without falling apart.