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Planked Smelts, Colbert
Thoroughly wipe twelve good-sized, fresh smelts, cut off a little of the tails only, then split open through front without separating and season all over with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Lightly oil an oak plank-shad board, place the smelts on plank one beside another, baste with a little melted butter, then set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, squeeze juice of half a sound lemon over them, and send to table on the plank with a Colbert sauce.
A plain oven-planked fish with a compound butter served alongside. The single thing to fix is the timing: twenty-five minutes will dry smelts to paper.
- Cooking timeSplit smelts are thin and cook through in roughly 8 to 10 minutes; the flesh should just turn opaque at the backbone. Twenty-five minutes will leave them dry and stringy in a modern oven.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the original. Use a hot oven, around 425-450F, so the surface colours before the interior overcooks.
- The plankA "shad board" is a flat slab of untreated oak, the same tool used for planked shad. Any untreated hardwood plank works; it must be free of finish or glue, and it helps to soak it briefly and preheat it in the oven so the fish does not stick.
- Splitting through the frontThis means butterflying through the belly, spine and skin left intact, so the fish opens flat like a book. Leave the head on for the period look, or remove it if you prefer.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for twelve fish is on the generous side by current taste, particularly the pepper. Season the cut side lightly and taste with the first batch.
- Colbert sauceClassically a compound butter rather than a liquid sauce: butter worked with meat glaze or reduced stock, lemon juice, and chopped tarragon and parsley. Make it ahead, chill it, and set a slice on each fish so it melts at the table.
- Buying smeltsSold whole and often frozen; thaw and dry them thoroughly, since surface water steams rather than browns. 'Good-sized' points to the larger end of whatever is available.
- YieldTwelve smelts serve two as a main course, or four as a first course.
Planking is a North American technique, generally traced to Atlantic coastal cookery where shad were nailed or laid on oak boards and cooked before an open fire; by the later nineteenth century the board had also moved into the oven, and here it serves as both cooking surface and serving dish, which is why the recipe insists the fish go to table on it. Smelts were cheap and appeared constantly on American restaurant menus of the period. The Colbert garnish is French and is conventionally said to honour Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented; pairing it with an American plank is exactly the kind of transatlantic splice a book calling itself international, written out of the Delmonico's kitchen tradition, was built to record.