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Porgies, Monastere
Scale, trim and neatly wipe six very fresh, fat porgies. Season all over with a teaspoon salt, a half teaspoon paprika and a saltspoon ground thyme; place on a lightly buttered tin, sprinkle over a tablespoon very finely chopped parsley, squeeze juice of one sound lemon and arrange a few little bits butter over the surface. Pour a half gill white wine into the tin, set in oven to bake twenty-five minutes, being careful to occasionally baste them with their own gravy. Remove, take up with a skimmer and place in a baking dish. Mix in a saucepan a tablespoon butter with one and a half tablespoons flour; heat for half minute. Strain the fish liquor through a cloth into this pan, add one gill cream, the white of a hard-boiled, chopped egg, briskly mix until it comes to a boil, and pour sauce over the fish. Sprinkle a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over, then place in oven ten minutes. Remove, finely chop the egg yolk, dredge it over fish and serve.
A two-stage bake: the fish roasts in wine and butter, then goes back under a cream sauce built from its own liquor. The measurements are pre-standard and the oven temperature is left to the cook's judgment.
- The fishPorgy is scup, a small Atlantic panfish sold whole at a good fish counter and common in Asian and Portuguese markets. Six fish of about 3/4 to 1 lb each serves six; sea bream, small snapper or black sea bass substitute directly.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of wine is 1/4 cup and a gill of cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For whole fish of this size, 400F is right for the first bake and for the ten-minute glazing pass; hotter and the wine in the shallow tin scorches before the fish is through.
- The tin"Tin" means a shallow rimmed roasting pan, not a loaf tin. The wine should sit in a thin layer so it reduces into a concentrated liquor rather than poaching the fish.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes suits fish approaching a pound; smaller scup are done in 15 to 18. The flesh should just part from the backbone. The second ten minutes in the oven is only to set and colour the sauce, so the fish should be barely done when it comes out the first time.
- The hingeStraining the pan liquor through a cloth into the roux is what makes the dish. Scrape every drop, including the reduced wine and butter, and if the yield is thin add a little more cream rather than water. The sauce must be whisked to a full boil to cook out the flour.
- Hard-boiled eggWhite goes into the sauce, yolk over the finished dish. The recipe says to chop the yolk finely; pushing it through a fine sieve instead gives a more even golden dusting.
- BrowningA tablespoon of Parmesan over six fish gives colour, not much flavour. If the top has not gilded after ten minutes, a minute under the broiler finishes it.
- ServingServes six as a main course, with boiled potatoes. Lift the fish with a wide slotted spatula, which is what the "skimmer" is doing here.
"Monastère" is one of the French-sounding garnish names common in American hotel and restaurant cookery of the period. Such names were generally taken to evoke the monastic lean day -- fish, butter, cream, egg and cheese, nothing from the butcher -- but the connection is traditional rather than documented, and whether any monastery ever cooked it is another matter. Porgy, or scup, was landed in large quantities along the Atlantic coast in the nineteenth century and sold cheaply, so it was exactly the sort of thing a professional cook dressed up with a grand-sounding name. The method here, roasting in wine and then re-napping with a sauce made from the roasting liquor, was standard practice of the period and works on any small whole fish.