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Pike Saute, Meuniere
Clean and well wipe six small, fresh pike. Season them equally with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, then gently roll in flour. Heat in a frying pan three tablespoons leaf lard or oil, arrange the fish, one beside another, and fry for five minutes on each side. Dress them on a hot dish. Clean the pan of all fat, add one ounce butter, shuffle the pan till the butter is a good brown; squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and pour over the pike; arrange six quarters of lemon around the dish; decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward meunière: flour, fry, then a brown butter and lemon sauce made in the same pan. Two details decide the outcome — dry fish and butter caught at the right shade of brown.
- Fish size and substitution"Six small, fresh pike" means pan-sized whole fish, probably somewhere in the region of 8-12 oz each, one per person. Whole pike is hard to source; skin-on walleye, perch, trout or bream fillets of 5-6 oz behave the same way and need only 3-4 minutes a side.
- Wipe means dry"Clean and well wipe" is the hinge. Flour will not brown on damp skin, and the fish steams instead of frying. Pat thoroughly dry with paper towel just before flouring, and flour at the last moment so the coating stays powdery rather than pasty.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the pig's kidneys, mild in flavour and with a higher smoke point than butter. Clarified butter, ghee or a neutral oil all work; ordinary butter alone is likely to burn over the ten minutes of frying called for here.
- TimingFive minutes a side suits a whole fish an inch and a half thick over medium-high heat. Fillets are done when the flesh is opaque and flakes at the thickest point — around 145F. Fry in two batches rather than crowding the pan.
- The brown butterOne ounce is two tablespoons. Wiping the pan free of frying fat matters: scorched flour specks make the butter taste burnt. Swirl over medium heat until the milk solids turn hazelnut brown and it smells nutty, roughly a minute, then add the lemon off the heat — it will foam hard.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper across six fish is right for whole fish seasoned inside and out; halve it for fillets.
- ServingServes six as written. The brown butter dulls quickly once poured, so plate the fish, make the butter, and carry it to the table at once.
Meunière is French for "miller's wife," and the name is traditionally said to point at the flour dredge — the cook nearest the mill flouring her fish before it hits the fat. By the time this book appeared the method had hardened into a formula: season, flour, fry in fat, then a separate beurre noisette with lemon poured over at the last moment. Pike is a telling choice for a book surveying "the world's kitchen." A freshwater predator common across northern Europe and the American Great Lakes, it was a familiar market fish then in a way it is not now, prized for firm white flesh and cursed for its fine forked bones.