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Pickerel, Albert
Trim, cut off the head, split in two and remove the spinal bone of a three-pound fresh pickerel. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, repeatedly turn the fish in the seasoning. Arrange on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Pour a brown horseradish sauce on a hot dish. Dress the fish over the same and serve.
A plain broiled fish with a made sauce underneath, in the terse Delmonico's house style. Everything hinges on having the sauce finished before the fish goes near the heat.
- Make the sauce firstThe recipe assumes a brown horseradish sauce is already standing hot — a brown sauce or espagnole finished with grated horseradish, usually off the heat so the horseradish keeps its bite. Broiled fish waits for nothing, so the sauce must be poured onto the warmed platter before the fish comes off the broiler.
- What a pickerel isIn American usage of this period, a small pike (Esox), lean and firm. In much of Canada "pickerel" means walleye, which is a different fish but broils comparably. Any 2 1/2 to 3 lb lean freshwater fish — walleye, small pike, perch — will behave the same way.
- The bonesRemoving the "spinal bone" leaves you with two boneless-looking sides, but true pike carry Y-shaped intermuscular bones along the upper flank that no amount of splitting removes. Either pull them with pliers or warn whoever is eating.
- Broiler heat and distanceThis was written for a hinged wire broiler over live coals or a gas salamander — very fierce, direct heat. Under a modern overhead broiler, set the rack 4 to 5 inches from the element and preheat it fully; a lukewarm broiler will steam the fish grey instead of colouring it.
- Six minutes a sideReasonable for split halves of a 3 lb fish under real heat, but check rather than trust the clock. The flesh should be opaque and just separating into flakes at the thickest point, about 145F. Split halves this thin are often done in four to five minutes a side.
- Turning the fishA split, boned side is fragile. Broil skin side down first if the skin is on, or use a well-oiled fish basket or two spatulas; the original cook had the luxury of a hinged broiler that flipped in one motion.
- The seasoningOne tablespoon of oil for a whole 3 lb fish is a film, not a marinade — the point is adhesion and browning, not moisture. Turn the pieces on the seasoned plate right before broiling; salt left sitting on thin fish draws out water.
- YieldA 3 lb whole pickerel, headed and boned, serves two generously or three modestly. Allow about 1/2 cup of sauce for the platter.
This is one of the hundreds of terse entries in Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book (1906), written by a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, where the convention was to fix a garnish and sauce to a name and then repeat it across every protein on the card. "Albert" here reads as a formula label rather than a story, and its origin is generally traced, without documentation, to the fashion for naming dishes after European royalty and notable patrons. What the recipe really records is the American restaurant habit of treating freshwater fish seriously: pickerel, pike and walleye came off the Great Lakes and inland rivers in quantity before commercial regulation and refrigerated ocean freight, which are often said to have shifted urban menus toward saltwater species, and a lean, firm river fish under a fierce broiler with a sharp brown sauce was standard hotel cooking rather than anything exotic. Horseradish with freshwater fish is an older northern-European pairing, though how it reached the American professional kitchen is less certain.