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Sheepshead, Lobster Sauce
Procure a three-pound piece of sheepshead, neatly trim, remove bones and thoroughly wipe. Place in a saucepan one sliced carrot, a sliced onion, sprig thyme, one bay leaf, two cloves, half gill vinegar, half a sound lemon, two quarts cold water, two branches parsley and a level tablespoon salt, then let boil fifteen minutes. Lay in the fish and let slowly boil twenty-five minutes. Lift up the fish with the skimmer, place on a hot dish. Pour lobster sauce over it and serve.
A plain court bouillon poach dressed with a separate lobster sauce. The one thing worth changing is the cooking time.
- Half a gill of vinegarA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. Cider or white wine vinegar both work; the acid firms the flesh and keeps it white.
- Boil the broth first, then stop boilingThe fifteen minutes of boiling is for the vegetables and aromatics. Once the fish goes in, hold the liquid at a bare shiver, around 175-180F. A rolling boil shreds the flakes and pushes albumin out in white curds.
- Twenty-five minutes is too longA trimmed three-pound piece needs roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness, and is done at 135-140F at the thickest point. Twenty-five minutes of boiling will leave it dry and cottony.
- The fish itselfSaltwater sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus) is a firm, sweet, mild fish still sold on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts. Black drum, porgy, striped bass or a thick cut of halibut all substitute cleanly.
- Vessel and handlingUse a wide, shallow pan so the piece lies flat and fully submerged. Tying the fish in a double layer of cheesecloth, or setting it on a poaching rack, lets you lift it out whole -- a skimmer alone tends to break a poached piece.
- Lobster sauceThe book gives its lobster sauce elsewhere; the usual version of the period is a butter-and-flour roux loosened with cream or some of the poaching liquid, finished with diced cooked lobster and often a little of the coral for colour. Strain and reduce a cup of the court bouillon for the base rather than discarding it.
- Half a sound lemon"Sound" means unblemished and not shrivelled. The half lemon goes into the broth; keep the other half back to squeeze over the fish at the table.
- YieldThree pounds of trimmed, boned fish serves four to six as a main course.
Sheepshead was a staple of nineteenth-century American fish markets, named for its teeth, which were likened to a sheep's, and it appears constantly in New York and New Orleans cookery of the period before changing tastes pushed it to the margins. The method here is straight classical French: a court bouillon of root vegetables, herbs, spice and acidulated water, in which a whole piece of fish is gently cooked and then sauced. Pairing a lean white fish with a rich shellfish sauce -- lobster, shrimp or oyster -- was one of the standard moves of hotel and restaurant kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic, and The International Cook Book, compiled by Alexander Filippini, a longtime chef of Delmonico's in New York, is very much a record of that professional repertoire written down for home use.