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Sea Bass, Etuvee
Scale, cut off fins and wipe two fresh sea bass of a pound and a half each, cut in inch pieces crosswise and keep on a plate until required. Mix in a saucepan one and a half tablespoons melted butter with two tablespoons flour and cook until a light brown, stirring meanwhile. Add twelve small white onions, mix a little, brown for five minutes, moisten with one gill claret, two gills white broth, mix well and boil for five minutes. Add the fish, with a finely chopped bean garlic, a teaspoon finely chopped parsley, a teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, gently mix, cover pan and set in oven for forty minutes. Remove, lift up fish and onions with skimmer, dress on a hot dish, then boil sauce for ten minutes; squeeze in juice of half a sound lemon, add half ounce butter by little bits, mix a little, strain through a Chinese strainer over the fish and serve.
A red-wine fish stew finished in the oven, written for a cook who already knew what étuvée meant and how long fish takes. The oven stage is the one place where the original will let you down.
- Forty minutes is far too longInch-thick bass steaks in a simmering sauce are done in 10 to 15 minutes at 350F, when the flesh just parts from the bone. Hold to the stated forty minutes in a modern oven and the fish shreds into the sauce.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one gill claret is 1/2 cup and two gills broth is 1 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, making three saltspoons roughly 3/4 teaspoon of pepper — assertive but not a misprint.
- Bean garlic"A bean of garlic" is a single clove. Not a head.
- White brothA light unbrowned stock — veal or chicken, unsalted or barely salted. Since you are also adding a teaspoon of salt and then reducing the sauce twice, use low-sodium stock or the finished sauce will be harsh.
- ClaretNineteenth-century shorthand for red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; avoid anything oaky or sweet, which turns bitter as the sauce reduces.
- OnionsTwelve small white onions means peeled pearl or boiling onions. Frozen peeled pearl onions are an honest substitute; brown them in the roux as directed.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Set 350F — enough to hold a bare simmer under the lid without boiling the fish apart.
- Finishing the sauceThe half ounce (1 tablespoon) of butter goes in bit by bit off the heat, after the ten-minute reduction and the lemon. Boil it again and the emulsion breaks and the sauce looks greasy.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the fine conical sieve. A fine-mesh strainer does the same job; press the solids lightly to catch the onion body without pushing pulp through.
- YieldThree pounds of whole fish serves four as a main course with bread or boiled potatoes to take up the sauce.
Étuvée comes from étuver, to cook slowly in a closed vessel with very little liquid, so that the food half stews and half steams in its own vapor — hence the insistence on covering the pan. Fish stewed in red wine with small onions belongs to the French matelote family, generally traced to the freshwater cooking of the Loire and Burgundy, where eel and carp were simmered in the local wine. The structure of the recipe is pure professional kitchen practice of the period: a roux cooked to light brown made first, wine and broth added to it, and a finish of lemon and raw butter whisked in to give gloss.