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Sheepshead, Bread Sauce
Scale, cut off fins, remove bones and neatly wipe a three-pound piece fresh sheepshead, place it in a saucepan with a sliced carrot, sliced onion, half a sliced lemon, sprig thyme, bay leaf, clove, two tablespoons vinegar, branch parsley, teaspoon whole black pepper, teaspoon salt and water enough to cover the fish. Place lid on pan, then let slowly boil for forty-five minutes. Carefully lift up fish with skimmer, dress on a hot dish, pour a bread sauce over and serve.
A plain court-bouillon poach with an English bread sauce spooned over. Everything here works except the cooking time, which belongs to an era of thicker, older fish and lower expectations.
- The time is the problemForty-five minutes at a simmer will reduce a 3-lb piece of sheepshead to shreds. Figure roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare shiver — for a thick center cut, 12 to 18 minutes total — and pull it when the flesh is just opaque at the bone.
- "Slowly boil" means do not boilFish poached in moving water breaks apart and goes cottony. Bring the aromatics and water to a boil first, lower the fish in, then hold the pot where a bubble rises every few seconds.
- Bone it after, not beforeThe instruction to remove bones from a raw 3-lb piece is optional at best. Poaching on the bone keeps the piece intact and adds body to the broth; lift the frame out on the plate.
- SheepsheadArchosargus probatocephalus, the Atlantic inshore fish with the human-looking teeth, still sold on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts. It is notoriously hard to scale — many fishmongers will do it. Black drum, porgy, striped bass or any firm white fish substitutes without changing the method.
- The aromaticsCarrot, onion, lemon, thyme, bay, clove, peppercorns, vinegar and salt is a standard court bouillon. It is worth simmering the vegetables 10 minutes before the fish goes in, otherwise they contribute little in the short time the fish actually needs.
- Bread sauceThe book assumes you know it: milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with fresh white breadcrumbs, finished with butter and a scrape of nutmeg. Make it while the fish poaches and keep it loose — it thickens fast as it sits, and it should pour, not sit in a mound.
- YieldThree pounds of fish on the bone serves four generously.
Bread sauce is thoroughly English — a medieval survival in which stale bread, not flour or egg, does the thickening, and it is usually met alongside roast game birds rather than fish. Its appearance over a poached Gulf and South Atlantic fish is exactly the kind of collision that gives The International Cook Book its name: a French court bouillon, an English sauce, and an American fish, assembled in a professional kitchen where all three were simply techniques on hand. Sheepshead was a common market fish in early twentieth-century Eastern and Southern cities, prized for sweet firm flesh and cursed for armor-like scales; it later fell out of commercial favor and is now largely a recreational catch, which is why the name is unfamiliar to many cooks who would recognize every other item in the pot.