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Red Snapper, Indienne
Scale, remove fins and bones from a three-pound piece fresh red snapper and finely slice a medium onion and sound apple. Place both in sautoire with a tablespoon melted butter and fry for ten minutes, stirring once in a while. Dredge in two tablespoons flour, stir well, add a half gill white wine, one and a half gills water, a sprig thyme, bay leaf, clove, saltspoon nutmeg, rind of a lemon, teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne and teaspoon curry powder. Sharply mix until it comes to a boil, add fish, cover with a buttered paper, then set in oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, carefully lift up fish with two skimmers, dress on a hot dish, remove any vegetables adhering, strain gravy through a Chinese strainer over fish and serve.
A French braise in all but name, dressed with curry powder in the manner nineteenth-century kitchens called à l'indienne. Nothing here is difficult; the only real trap is the cooking time.
- Cut the time downWatch the time -- thirty-five minutes may be more than a boned piece of snapper needs, though this is a substantial three-pound piece rather than a thin fillet. Depending on thickness it will likely be done well before the full time; start checking at twenty minutes and take it out when the thickest part just parts. (Standard guidance for fish is 145F; many cooks pull it a little earlier.)
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual. Treat it as a moderate oven, 350F, which suits a covered braise in liquid.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of wine is 1/4 cup and one and a half gills of water is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, which applies to both the nutmeg and the cayenne.
- Sautoire and Chinese strainerA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan with a lid; use any shallow pan that goes from stovetop to oven. The Chinese strainer is a chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer -- a regular fine sieve does the same work.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered side down on the fish. It keeps the surface from drying while allowing a little evaporation. Do not substitute a tight foil seal, which steams too hard.
- "Sound apple"Simply a firm, unbruised apple. A tart cooking variety works well here; it is sliced thin, softens in the pan, and its flavour and sweetness pass into the gravy, which is strained before serving.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of this period were generally milder and more turmeric-forward than many sold today, though blends varied. Modern powders differ widely in heat; taste as you go and adjust rather than doubling both the curry and the cayenne.
- Lemon rindUse the rind in wide strips, no pith, and pull them out before straining. Grated zest cannot be removed and turns bitter over a long braise.
- Lifting and servingTwo skimmers means two flat perforated lifters, one at each end, so the piece does not break. Three pounds of snapper serves four generously with rice.
Indienne in a book of this vintage signals not Indian cooking but the French professional kitchen's standing formula for it: curry powder, onion, apple, a little stock or wine, and often cream or rice alongside. Curry powder had been sold in Europe since the late eighteenth century as a ready-made blend, and by the time classical French service was codified it had settled into a fixed repertoire of à l'indienne preparations for fish, chicken and eggs. The apple is the tell -- it is a European sweetening trick, not a subcontinental one, and it survives today in the mild "curry sauces" of French and Anglo-Indian hotel cooking. Red snapper marks the recipe as American in its raw materials: the Gulf snapper fishery is generally said to have supplied East Coast hotel and restaurant kitchens by the turn of the twentieth century.