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Perch Saute, Anchovy Butter
Scale, trim and wipe six small, even-sized fresh perch. Season them all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly wet with a little cold milk, then roll in flour. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add the perch, one beside another, and fry for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a dish, spread an anchovy butter over them and serve
A plain pan-fry that depends almost entirely on the anchovy butter, which the recipe assumes you already know how to make. Two things need attention: the fat is under-measured, and the timing suits fish considerably thicker than most perch you will buy.
- The anchovy butterThe book expects you to have it on hand. Work 4 oz softened butter with 6-8 rinsed anchovy fillets mashed to a paste, or 2 teaspoons anchovy paste, plus a squeeze of lemon; chill until firm and slice coins onto the hot fish so it melts at the table. It should taste salty and savoury rather than fishy.
- Salt twice overA teaspoon of salt for six small fish, plus salted anchovy butter, easily overshoots. Season the fish lightly and let the butter carry the salt.
- One tablespoon of butter is not enoughFor six fish laid side by side you need 3-4 tablespoons, and butter alone will brown and burn before the second side is done. Use half butter, half neutral oil, or clarified butter, over medium-high heat.
- Six minutes a side is too longWhole yellow perch run 4-8 oz and are thin. Three to four minutes a side gives a crisp crust and flesh that lifts cleanly from the backbone; twelve minutes total will dry them out. Cook to 145F at the thickest point behind the head.
- Milk then flourThe milk is there only to make the flour stick, so wet the fish lightly and dredge just before it goes in the pan. Flour that has sat and gone pasty will slide off in the fat.
- If you cannot get perchAny small, thin, mild freshwater or lean white fish works the same way: crappie, bluegill, small trout, or fillets of tilapia or sole with the time cut to about two minutes a side.
- YieldSix small whole fish serves three as a main course, or six as a first course. Serve immediately; the butter is the sauce and it will not survive holding.
Perch belongs to the modest end of the fish market, and this recipe treats it accordingly: scale, flour, fry, and then rescue it with a compound butter. Beurre d'anchois was one of the standard flavoured butters of the professional French repertoire and appears in period kitchen manuals alongside maître d'hôtel butter and beurre noir; the idea was that a cook kept several of them chilled and ready to finish grilled or sautéed food in seconds. Anchovy was a common all-purpose savoury note in English and American kitchens through the nineteenth century, in the form of essence, paste and bottled sauce, supplying depth to lean fish and plain meat.