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Kingfish Saute, Fines Herbes
Neatly draw, cut off the heads and split open two very fresh kingfish; remove the spinal bones; season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; lightly wet with a tablespoon milk and gently roll in flour. Heat one tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add the fish, cut side downward; fry for six minutes, turn over with the skimmer and set in the oven to bake for six minutes. Remove, dress on a dish, add half teaspoon chopped parsley, half teaspoon chopped chives and a saltspoon of chopped chervil to the pan; lightly mix, then squeeze in the juice of half a sound lemon, pour over the fish and serve.
A plain sauté-and-finish for small whole fish, with a pan sauce that is barely a sauce. The points below cover the two things the original leaves vague: what a kingfish is, and how hot the oven should be.
- What kingfish means hereIn an American book of this period, kingfish most likely means the northern kingfish (Menticirrhus saxatilis), a small Atlantic drum also sold as whiting or sea mullet — a fish of roughly a pound, one per person. The name was also applied to king mackerel elsewhere, but a small pan fish is what this recipe calls for. Any small firm-fleshed round fish of that size works: whiting, small sea bass, red mullet, branzino.
- Split open, spinal bones outThe fish is opened flat and the backbone lifted out, head off, skin on; the original does not say whether the cut runs along the belly or the back, only that the cut side goes down in the pan. A fishmonger will do this if asked for the fish butterflied.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A hot oven is implied by the short six-minute finish; in a moderate oven expect it to take longer and the floured crust to soften.
- Butter quantityOne tablespoon for two fish is thin even in a well-seasoned pan. Use two to three, and add a little neutral oil so the milk solids do not blacken during the six minutes of frying.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the chervil is half the quantity of the parsley and chives.
- Fines herbesThe classical set is parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon; this version drops the tarragon. Best fresh and chopped at the last moment; the original tips them into the pan and mixes lightly, so keep the heat low and the contact brief rather than letting them fry.
- The pan sauceHerbs, then lemon, then straight over the fish; it is a pan liquid rather than a sauce and does not hold, so serve at once. Have the plates warm and the lemon already halved.
- YieldTwo fish, two servings. Scale by cooking in batches rather than crowding the pan; two butterflied fish laid flat already fill a 12-inch skillet.
Fines herbes had, by the time this book was compiled, become shorthand for the whole family of quick sautés finished with chopped green herbs, butter and lemon — a treatment applied to eggs, veal kidneys, chicken and, as here, small fish; the fixed quartet of herbs is itself a comparatively late codification. What makes the entry American rather than French is the fish itself: the northern kingfish was a common, cheap catch along the Atlantic coast from New York to the Carolinas, prized by anglers and market cooks for firm white flesh. Books of this sort routinely paired a local species with a French method. The technique of starting a floured fish in the pan and finishing it in the oven is a professional one.