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Pompano, Meuniere
Trim off the fins and wipe two fresh one-and-a-half-pound pompanos, make a few small incisions on both sides of the skin, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly baste with a little milk, then gently turn in flour. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add the fish, one beside another, and fry for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a dish, squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon over, then sprinkle with a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. Place an ounce butter in frying pan, toss on the fire until of a light brown colour, pour over fish and serve.
A straightforward whole-fish sauté in which almost everything depends on the butter. Filippini's quantities are lean by modern standards and the browned butter finish needs closer attention than the text suggests.
- Use more fat than specifiedA tablespoon and a half of butter will not carry two one-and-a-half-pound fish; the flour will scorch in patches before the fish is cooked. Allow 3 to 4 tablespoons of clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, in a wide heavy pan — and cook the fish in two batches unless the pan is at least 14 inches.
- "Baste with a little milk"This is a dip, not a basting: the milk wets the surface so the flour clings and browns evenly. Pour a little into a shallow dish, turn the fish through it, then straight into seasoned flour and into the pan. Flour applied more than a minute or two ahead goes pasty.
- TimingSix minutes a side suits a whole pompano of that weight over medium-high heat, but judge by the flesh rather than the clock — cooks commonly pull fish at around 135°F at the thickest point beside the backbone, though standard food-safety guidance for fish is 145°F; the flesh should part cleanly from the bone. Fillets, if that is what you have, need three to four minutes a side at most.
- Scaling and trimmingThe recipe assumes a fishmonger has gutted and scaled the fish. Pompano scales are small and easily missed; run a thumb against the grain before flouring. The shallow incisions through the skin keep it from curling and help heat reach the bone.
- The browned butter is the hingeWhole butter passes from nut-brown to burnt in a matter of seconds once the milk solids colour. Use a clean, cool pan rather than the one you fried in, swirl constantly off the direct flame, and pour it over the moment it smells of hazelnuts. Have the fish already plated with lemon and parsley so there is no waiting.
- Substitutes for pompanoFlorida pompano is available but expensive and not always in season. Small whole trout, butterfish, black sea bass, or a pair of Dover or petrale sole take the same treatment; keep to fish of a pound to a pound and a half so the timing holds.
- YieldTwo fish of this size serve two generously, or four as a first course. Season the fish just before flouring — the full teaspoon of salt is for both fish, inside and out.
Meunière means "miller's wife," the name pointing to the light dusting of flour that is the method's only real trick; the same logic gives us à la meunière for anything floured and fried in butter. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, was writing at a moment when pompano was often counted among the prestige fish of the American table, shipped north on ice from the Gulf and Florida coasts and treated with the French repertoire that governed hotel cooking. New Orleans claims the fish most loudly — the celebrated pompano en papillote is generally traced to Antoine's — but the plain butter-and-lemon version here may well be the older and is arguably the more revealing preparation: a firm, sweet, oily-fleshed fish needs very little, and this recipe is essentially an argument for leaving it alone.