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Sea Bass, Matelote
Scale, trim, wash and wipe dry two one-and-a-half-pound sea bass. Slice very finely two medium white onions, place in a large frying pan with half ounce butter and cook on a brisk fire for five minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Then lay the two fish over the onions, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, adding six small heads well-cleaned fresh mushrooms, twelve large freshly opened oysters and six whole fresh shrimp. Moisten with half gill claret, half gill tomato sauce and one gill demi-glace. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper and boil on the range for five minutes Then set the pan in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove the paper, lift up the fish, cook the contents of the pan for five minutes more on the range, then add, in small bits, half ounce good butter; stir well until the butter is melted, pour the gravy over the fish and serve.
A whole-fish braise dressed as a French matelote, written for a cook with a stockpot of demi-glace already on hand. The measurements are pre-metric restaurant shorthand and the shellfish timing needs rethinking.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of claret is 1/4 cup, half a gill of tomato sauce another 1/4 cup, and one gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- The oysters are the hingeAdded at the start, the oysters spend a good half hour in the pan and will shrink to erasers. Hold them back and slip them in for the last two or three minutes of the oven time, or drop them into the finished sauce off the heat and let the residual warmth just firm their edges.
- Demi-glaceClassically equal parts espagnole and brown stock, reduced by half; a staple of the better-staffed professional kitchens of the period. A half cup of well-reduced homemade veal or beef stock, or a good commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted per the label, does the job; a thin canned broth will not, since the sauce depends on it for body.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe simply says to set the pan in the oven. A hot oven of around 400F suits a covered pan of whole fish, and twenty minutes should be in the right region for two 1.5 lb bass, though pans and ovens vary -- test at the backbone rather than trusting the clock.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It keeps the exposed flesh from drying without sealing the pan, so the liquid still reduces.
- Brisk fireMedium-high heat. The onions are meant to soften and take a little colour in five minutes, not to caramelize.
- Shrimp and mushrooms'Whole' shrimp most likely means head and shell on, which is where the flavour is; head-on shrimp are worth seeking out, but shell-on tail pieces will serve. 'Small heads' of mushroom are simply small button caps, left whole.
- Finishing the sauceThe butter goes in off the boil and is stirred, not whisked hard, until it melts into the reduced liquid. Let it boil after that and it will separate.
- YieldTwo fish of a pound and a half each serve four generously, or two if the fish are presented whole and split at the table.
Matelote comes from the French matelot, sailor, and is most often associated with a freshwater fish stewed in wine with onions and mushrooms, the sort of thing made on the riverbanks of Burgundy or the Loire with eel, carp or pike, though marine versions such as matelote normande exist too. What appears here is a hotel kitchen's translation of that idea into saltwater: sea bass instead of eel, with oysters and shrimp added. The claret and the demi-glace are the tells of turn-of-the-century American grand-hotel cooking, where classical French sauce work was the house language and a brown sauce was always on the stove. Books of this period regularly took a regional French name and hung an American market's fish on it.