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Perch Sautes, Fines Herbes
Procure six medium-sized fresh perch; neatly draw and remove all the fins with a pair of scissors. Wash well and wipe dry. Season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; then roll them in flour. Heat in a large frying pan one tablespoon melted butter; place the fish in the pan and fry for six minutes on each side. See that they obtain a good golden colour. Remove them with a skimmer. Dress on a hot dish. Chop very fine ten branches chives (ciboulette), one branch chervil and two branches parsley; sprinkle all over the six fish; squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon over them. Heat in a frying pan to a light brown colour half ounce butter and pour it over the herb mixture on top of the perch. Decorate the dish with six sections of lemon and serve.
A straightforward pan-fried fish finished with chopped herbs and browned butter. Two things need attention: the fat is under-measured for six whole fish, and the frying time is generous by modern standards.
- Scale as well as finThe instruction covers drawing and trimming the fins but not scaling, which perch badly need — their scales are small, hard and firmly set. Scale before gutting, working from tail to head, or ask the fishmonger to do it.
- More fat than one tablespoonA single tablespoon of butter will not carry six whole fish in a large pan; it will burn before the second side is done. Use three to four tablespoons, or half butter and half neutral oil, which raises the smoke point and gives the same browning.
- Six minutes a side is longSix minutes a side -- That timing suits reasonably thick whole perch over moderate heat; the recipe does not give a weight beyond 'medium-sized'. Fillets need two to three minutes a side. Judge by the flesh: it should be opaque at the bone and lift cleanly from it.
- "Branches" of herbsA branch here is a sprig or stem. Ten chives chopped fine come to roughly a tablespoon; one sprig of chervil and two of parsley are small quantities by design — the herbs season, they do not blanket.
- If you cannot find chervilChervil is the least available of the classic fines herbes and has a faint anise note. A little tarragon plus extra parsley approximates it; do not simply double the parsley, which is the flattest of the three.
- The browned butter is the pointHalf an ounce is one tablespoon. Take it to beurre noisette — foaming subsided, milk solids nut-brown, a distinct hazelnut smell — then pour it straight over the herbs so it sizzles. Poured pale, it adds nothing; taken too far it turns acrid in seconds.
- Order of finishingHerbs, then lemon juice, then the hot butter. Reversing the last two washes the butter off the fish and dulls the crust.
- YieldSix medium perch serve three to six, depending on size — a half-pound whole fish is one portion, a smaller one two to a plate.
Fines herbes is a fixed French formula rather than a general phrase for greenery: chervil, chives, parsley and tarragon, chopped fine and added raw or at the last moment so their volatile oils survive. This recipe uses three of the four and leans on chives, which the author glosses with the French ciboulette. Perch is a freshwater fish. The finish of browned butter and lemon over a floured, pan-fried fish is the same gesture as meuni e standing in for the plainer classic.