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Sheepshead, Mariniere
Scale and bone a three-pound piece fresh sheepshead, place in a sautoire, add one ounce butter, one gill white wine, the juice of quarter of a lemon, half a teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Cover the fish with a sheet of buttered paper, boil for five minutes, set in oven for fifteen minutes, then bring it to the oven door. Add twelve freshly opened mussels, six freshly opened oysters, six shrimps (cooked) and six canned mushrooms. Reset in the oven for ten minutes more, remove, lift fish with a skimmer, place on a dish and keep hot.
Mix in a small saucepan one tablespoon melted butter with two tablespoons flour, strain the fish liquor into pan, add a gill cream, mix until it comes to a boil, then add the garnishing; lightly mix, cook for two minutes, pour over the fish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over all and serve.
A restaurant-style braised fish with a white wine and shellfish garnish, written for a cook who already knows how a fish velouté behaves. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is never given, and the shellfish are treated as if they need as long as the fish.
- GillHalf a cup. The recipe uses two of them — half a cup of white wine for the braise, half a cup of cream in the sauce.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper on a three-pound piece of fish. That is assertive by modern taste; a quarter teaspoon is closer to what most cooks want.
- SautoireA shallow, straight-sided sauté pan, ideally one that goes from burner to oven. The fish should sit in a single layer with the wine barely covering the bottom.
- Oven heatUnspecified, as was common in a professional book. Treat it as a moderate oven, 350F — hot enough to hold the liquid at a bare simmer without reducing it to nothing.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: parchment cut to the size of the pan, buttered on the side facing the fish. It keeps the exposed surface from drying while still letting steam escape, which a tight lid does not.
- The shellfish timingThis is the hinge. Ten minutes in the oven leaves the mussels fine but turns the oysters and the cooked shrimp to rubber. Add the mussels for the last stretch, and fold the oysters and shrimp into the finished sauce off the heat, where the residual warmth is enough.
- DonenessThirty minutes of cooking in all (five minutes at a boil, fifteen in the oven, ten more once the garnish goes in) suits a thick three-pound piece; a thinner fillet section will be done well before that. Pull it at 130-135F at the thickest point, when the flesh just separates from the bone.
- Sheepshead and substitutesThe Atlantic sheepshead is a firm, sweet-fleshed porgy relative, not always available. Black drum, scup, striped bass or black sea bass all behave the same way in this braise.
- Canned mushroomsA period convenience with little flavour. Six small button mushrooms, quartered and sautéed in butter until their water has gone, do the job better.
- The sauceTwo tablespoons of flour to one of butter is flour-heavy by volume, though closer to even by weight. Strain the fish liquor in slowly and simmer it a couple of minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- YieldFour servings as a main course.
Marinière means simply "mariner's style" — in French cooking, a preparation with white wine, often with mussels, of which moules marinière is the survivor most people know. Here the formula is scaled up and turned into a composed dish: a whole piece of fish braised in wine, garnished with mussels, oysters, shrimp and mushrooms, and bound with a cream velouté made from its own liquor. That layering of shellfish over fish, and the finishing sauce built in a separate small pan, is characteristic of American hotel and restaurant cooking of the turn of the century. Sheepshead itself was once a familiar market fish along the mid-Atlantic coast, prized for firm white flesh and said to be named for its teeth, which resemble a sheep's; Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn is generally said to take its name from the fish, which had become scarce in local waters by the time such recipes were being printed.