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Sea Bass a L'Italienne
Scale, trim off the fins and neatly wipe two sea bass of one and a half pounds each. Cut the heads off, split in two through the back and remove spinal bones. Place in a frying pan with an ounce butter, a half gill white wine, and season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper, set in the oven for fifteen minutes, remove, lift up and lay them on a baking dish. Prepare an Italian sauce pour the fish liquor into sauce, mix well, then pour over the fish. Sprinkle a little grated Parmesan cheese over and set in the oven to bake for fifteen minutes. Remove, decorate all around the fish with thin slices of lemon, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A two-stage bake: the fish is first cooked gently in wine and butter under paper, then napped with sauce italienne, dusted with Parmesan and returned to the oven. The total oven time as written is the main thing to adjust.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 2 fl oz (1/4 cup) of white wine. Two saltspoons of pepper is about 1/2 teaspoon.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Both stages want a moderate oven, 350-375F; the first is a gentle steam under paper, the second only needs to heat the sauce and colour the cheese.
- Cut the timeTwo split 1 1/2 lb bass are thin pieces. Fifteen minutes under paper plus fifteen more in sauce will leave them dry and chalky. Give the first stage 8-10 minutes, until the flesh is just set but not quite opaque at the thickest point, and the second 6-8 minutes, or run it under the broiler to glaze.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche: parchment cut to the size of the pan, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It traps steam without sealing, which is why the fish poaches rather than browns.
- The frying pan goes in the ovenThe recipe means an ovenproof shallow pan, not a nonstick skillet with a plastic handle. Any low-sided sauteuse or a small roasting pan works.
- Italian sauceSauce italienne in this period is usually a demi-glace or brown sauce finished with a duxelles of finely chopped mushrooms and shallots cooked down in white wine, with chopped ham in some versions and parsley and tarragon at the end; a white, velouté-based italienne was also used, sometimes with fish. Either way, you will need to have it made before the fish goes in.
- The fish liquorThe wine and butter left in the pan is the seasoning for the sauce. Strain it in and let the sauce come back together over low heat rather than dumping it in cold at the last moment.
- Fish choice"Sea bass" here means Atlantic black sea bass, not the Patagonian toothfish sold today as Chilean sea bass. Black sea bass, branzino, striped bass or any firm white round fish of that size behaves the same way.
- YieldTwo fish of 1 1/2 lb, split, serve four as a main course.
Sauce italienne is one of the small compound sauces codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens, and its name is often said to refer less to Italy than to its mushroom-and-ham duxelles, which French cooks associated with Italian cooking; the Parmesan gratin finish reinforces the label. The International Cook Book was assembled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is really a tour of the international restaurant repertoire of the period rather than of regional home cooking -- a dish became Italian, Portuguese or Milanaise according to its garnish. Black sea bass was then a cheap and abundant fish along the mid-Atlantic coast.