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Pickerel En Marinade
Cut off the fins and thoroughly wipe a three-pound fresh pickerel, place it on a deep dish, add a sliced onion, crushed half bean garlic, two branches parsley, sprig thyme, one bay leaf, two cloves, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, pour in half gill vinegar, half gill white wine, two gills water and the juice of half a sound lemon, turn the fish in the marinade and let infuse for two hours. Place the fish and marinade in an oval pan, cover, and let slowly boil for forty minutes, take up the fish with the skimmer, lay it on a hot dish with a folded napkin, remove any articles adhering to the fish, decorate with a little parsley greens and send to the table with a little melted butter separately.
A plain court-bouillon poaching of a whole fish, written in the compressed style of a professional kitchen. The measurements are pre-metric American restaurant units and the cooking time is the one thing worth ignoring.
- GillsA gill is a quarter pint, or half a cup. So half a gill each of vinegar and white wine is 1/4 cup each, and two gills of water is 1 cup. Total liquid is about a cup and a half with the lemon juice.
- "Half bean garlic"The book's usual rendering of the French demi-gousse d'ail: half a clove, crushed. Not half a head.
- The cooking timeForty minutes at a slow boil will reduce a three-pound fish to cotton wool. Bring the marinade barely to a shiver, never a rolling boil, and give it roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder — 20 to 25 minutes for a fish this size. It is done at 145F at the backbone, when the flesh parts cleanly from the bone.
- The fish"Pickerel" in American usage of this period could mean a small pike, or, in Great Lakes and Canadian usage, walleye; in some regions any young member of the pike family. Any firm, lean freshwater fish works: walleye, perch, or a whole trout. Pike is notoriously bony — the Y-bones along the upper fillet stay in when the fish is cooked whole, so warn people at the table.
- The oval panA fish kettle, long and narrow, with a perforated lift-out plate. A roasting pan set over two burners does the same job; lay the fish on a folded strip of cheesecloth long enough to use as handles, or it will break apart when you lift it.
- "Remove any articles adhering"Meaning the onion slices, bay leaf and cloves that have stuck to the skin. Pick them off before the fish goes to the table, and strain the marinade if you want to serve any of it.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin under a poached fish absorbs draining liquid so the platter does not flood. Still the best solution, and it is the reason the dish is not simply set on a bare plate.
- Melted butterWarm melted butter sent out separately in a sauceboat, sometimes with a little lemon and chopped parsley. Nothing thickened.
- YieldA three-pound whole fish serves four generously, three if the appetites are serious. Boiled potatoes are the traditional accompaniment.
The dish belongs to the classical French repertoire of poaching in court-bouillon — an acidulated aromatic broth of wine, vinegar, onion, herbs and spice, used for freshwater fish since at least the eighteenth century. The acid is traditionally said to firm the flesh and neutralise the muddy note that carp, pike and their relatives can pick up from still water. Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book from a career of writing menus for people who expected European technique applied to whatever the American market supplied. The French name was part of the dressing. Serving a whole fish on a folded napkin, garnished only with parsley, was standard hotel practice of the era.