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Pompano, San Juan
Trim and wipe two very fresh pompano of one and a half pounds each. Place in a frying pan with half ounce butter, half gill white wine, half gill water, a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Cover with a buttered paper, boil on the range for five minutes, then set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, dress the fish on a hot dish and keep hot. Mix in a saucepan one tablespoon butter with two and a half tablespoons flour and heat for half minute; pour in the fish liquor and one and a half gills milk, mix well until it comes to a boil, then add half teaspoon finely chopped chives, six minced canned mushrooms, three sweet red peppers cut into fine julienne strips, a half bean finely chopped garlic and a small, finely sliced truffle. Mix well, boil for five minutes, then pour the sauce over the fish, decorate with six bread croutons around the dish and serve.
A Delmonico-style braise: the fish poaches in its own liquor, which then becomes the sauce. Two things need translating — the gills, and the cooking time.
- GillsA gill is a half cup (4 fl oz). So half a gill of wine and half a gill of water are 1/4 cup each, and the gill and a half of milk for the sauce is 3/4 cup.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; ovens of the period generally lacked reliable thermostats and cooks judged heat by feel. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading; the pan is already simmering when it goes in, so the oven is mainly holding it there.
- The timing is longTwenty-five minutes total is likely to take a 1 1/2 lb whole pompano past done. Start checking well before the twenty minutes are up: the fish is ready when a knife slips easily to the backbone and the flesh releases from the bone. Pull them early and let them rest on the hot dish while you build the sauce.
- Buttered paperA cartouche — a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered on the side facing the fish. It keeps the exposed skin from drying without sealing the pan tight.
- "Half bean" of garlicA clove. Half a clove, finely chopped, is the intent; the whole clove will not overwhelm three peppers and a truffle.
- Sweet red peppersCanned pimientos, already peeled and soft, were commonly used in kitchens of this period, which would suit a sauce that boils only five minutes. Fresh red bell pepper wants a few minutes of cooking in the butter first, or roasting and peeling.
- Truffle and mushroomsThe canned mushrooms are for texture and the truffle for perfume; both can be left out without breaking the sauce. A teaspoon of truffle oil or a few dried porcini soaked and minced covers the same ground.
- Sauce consistencyTwo and a half tablespoons of flour to one of butter is a stiff roux by modern standards. Expect a thick, coating sauce; loosen with a little more milk if it sets up like paste.
- YieldTwo 1 1/2 lb fish serve four, or two generously. The six croutons are fried bread shapes set around the rim of the platter; the recipe does not specify how they are cut.
Pompano is a Gulf and South Atlantic fish, firm and rich enough to stand up to a butter sauce, and by the 1900s it was shipped north on ice to the big New York restaurants. Filippini, associated with Delmonico's, treats it as a luxury item alongside truffle and canned pimiento. The dish belongs to the same family as the better-known pompano en papillote from New Orleans: fish cooked under a paper cover in a little wine, its liquor thickened into a sauce. Restaurant cooks of the period often attached place names to garnishes.