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Pickerel, Cavour
Procure a three-pound fresh pickerel, trim well and wipe, place in a frying pan with six stoned and sliced queen olives, six sliced canned mushrooms, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, two tablespoons sherry, two gills demi-glace, half ounce butter and a half teaspoon slat; mix lightly, cover fish with a lightly buttered paper, boil on range five minutes, then set in oven thirty minutes. Remove, lift up paper, carefully dress fish on a hot dish, boil sauce five minutes, then add two tablespoons freshly grated horseradish; lightly mix, pour sauce over fish, decorate with six heart-shaped bread croutons around dish and serve.
A braised whole fish finished with a horseradish demi-glace, written for a cook who already has stock reduction on hand. Two things need translating before you start: the volumes and the oven.
- Two gills of demi-glaceA gill is half a cup, so this is 1 cup of demi-glace. If you are not making classical brown sauce, a cup of well-reduced veal or fish stock thickened lightly will behave the same way in the pan.
- "Half teaspoon slat"A printer's error for salt. Half a teaspoon is modest for a 3-lb fish plus a cup of sauce; season the finished sauce to taste after reducing, since demi-glace and olives both carry salt.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was normal. A moderate oven, 350F, suits a covered braise of this kind.
- Cooking timeThirty minutes after five on the range risks overcooking a 3-lb fish. Public health guidance puts cooked fish at 145F at the thickest point; many cooks pull whole fish a little earlier and let it carry over. Either way, start checking well before the half hour is up rather than trusting the clock.
- PickerelIn American usage of this period the name covers young pike and, loosely, walleye. Either works, as does whole trout or a small striped bass of the same weight. Ask for it scaled and gutted with head on, which is what "trim well" assumes.
- The buttered paperA cartouche, cut to the pan and buttered on the underside so it does not stick to the skin. It holds steam against the fish without sealing the pan, which is what keeps the sauce reducing rather than turning to broth.
- Queen olives and canned mushroomsQueen olives are the large green Spanish type, brine-cured; rinse them if they are aggressively salty. Canned mushrooms were a common storecupboard item in kitchens of this period and give a soft, neutral result; fresh cremini sliced thick work well and need no other change.
- Horseradish at the endThe hinge of the dish. Grated horseradish added off the boil keeps its heat; boiled in the sauce it goes flat and faintly cabbagey within a minute or two. Add it after the five-minute reduction, stir once, and pour.
- YieldA 3-lb whole fish serves three to four. The six heart-shaped croutons are dressed around the dish as decoration.
Dishes labelled Cavour honor Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the Piedmontese statesman who steered Italian unification in 1861; the name was attached in restaurant French to garnishes with an Italian accent, and here that means olives, mushrooms and sherry. The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry reads like a service recipe pulled straight from a hotel kitchen: it assumes a standing pot of demi-glace, canned mushrooms on the shelf, and a cook who knows how to cut a cartouche without being told. The horseradish finish is the interesting survival. Grated horseradish with boiled fish is a northern European habit, German and Central European in particular, and its appearance under an Italian name shows how freely the grand-hotel repertoire of the period borrowed, so long as the plate could be given a title.