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Sheepshead, Oyster Sauce
Scale, wash and neatly wipe a fine, fresh sheepshead of three pounds. Place it in a large sautoire with one-half sliced carrot, half sliced onion, two branches parsley. Season with a level tablespoon salt, a teaspoon white pepper, half gill good vinegar, half gill white wine and a pint hot water. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper. Set on a hot range until it comes to a boil, then place it in the oven to bake for twenty-five minutes. Remove, take up with a skimmer, dress the fish only on a hot dish and keep warm.
Prepare an oyster sauce. Pour two tablespoons fish broth in the oyster sauce, mix well, pour over the fish and serve.
BALOTINE OF VEAL BRAISE, PUREE OF SORREL Carefully remove all the bones from a small breast of veal. Season it all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper and keep on a dish. Skin three raw pork country sausages, place in a bowl, add one tablespoon finely chopped shallots, half teaspoon chopped parsley, one raw egg, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, half gill cream and one ounce bread crumbs; thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon for one minute, then spread the preparation evenly over the inside of the veal. Roll up the breast and firmly tie it with string all its length.
Heat three tablespoons melted lard in a braising pan; place the balotine in the pan and cook on the range until a nice golden colour. Then place a mirepoix, prepared, around the balotine. Moisten with a pint hot water, one gill claret, two gills demi-glace and two and a half gills tomato sauce. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan, and as soon as it comes to a boil set in the oven to braise for one hour and a quarter. Remove from the oven, untie the balotine, dress it on a hot dish. Skim off the fat from the surface of the gravy, reduce the gravy on a brisk fire to about half a pint, then strain it through a fine strainer over the balotine. Neatly arrange a sorrel puree, prepared, at both sides of the dish and serve.
Two dishes run together here in the professional shorthand of a hotel kitchen: a whole baked fish finished with oyster sauce, and a boned, stuffed breast of veal braised in the French manner. Both assume you have sauces and a mirepoix already standing by.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is 2 tablespoons and two and a half gills is roughly 1 1/4 cups. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- Sautoire and braising panA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow pan; for a 3 lb whole fish use a roasting pan or large ovenproof skillet that holds it without bending. The braising pan should be a heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid, both for browning and for the oven stage.
- Oven heatNeither dish is given a temperature. Bake the fish at about 400F for the stated 25 minutes and braise the veal at 325F for an hour and a quarter; the fish wants brisk heat to set quickly, the veal wants a lazy simmer that never breaks into a hard boil.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche laid directly on the fish, not a lid. Cut parchment to the pan's width, butter one side, and press it down so the fish steams in the aromatic liquid rather than drying at the surface. Foil traps too much and will grey the skin.
- Doneness on the fishTwenty-five minutes suits a whole 3 lb sheepshead; go by the flesh parting cleanly from the backbone at the thickest point, around 130-135F. Sheepshead is firm and forgiving but will still turn cottony if held long in a hot oven.
- The oyster sauceThis means a velouté or fish-stock sauce with poached oysters and their liquor stirred in, not the bottled Cantonese condiment. Add the shucked oysters at the very end and let them barely firm — a minute or two off the boil. Anything longer and they shrink to rubber.
- Sheepshead itselfThe Atlantic sheepshead is a lean, sweet, firm-fleshed fish sold mainly in Gulf and southeastern markets. Black sea bass, porgy, snapper or striped bass of the same size behave the same way whole.
- Mirepoix and demi-glaceThe mirepoix is the standard diced carrot, onion and celery with a bay leaf and thyme, lightly coloured. Demi-glace can be a reduced brown veal stock; a good commercial concentrate diluted to sauce strength works, though it is usually saltier, so hold back on the added teaspoon of salt until you taste the reduced gravy.
- Rolling the ballotineButterfly the boned breast to an even thickness before spreading the sausage forcemeat, leave a clear inch at the far edge so the filling does not squeeze out, and tie at 1 1/2-inch intervals. Rest it 10 minutes before slicing or the roll will fall apart.
- YieldThe fish serves 3 to 4; the veal breast, depending on its size, serves 4 to 6 with the sorrel purée.
Both dishes belong to the high French-American hotel cooking of the turn of the century, when a recipe could assume the reader had demi-glace, tomato sauce, mirepoix and a sorrel purée already made and standing on the range — the reason each is called for here as "prepared" rather than explained. Ballotine (spelled balotine here) comes from the French for a small bundle or pack, and describes exactly the technique: meat boned, stuffed, rolled and tied so it slices into neat rounds showing the forcemeat at the centre. The sheepshead is the more distinctly American note. Its name is usually explained by its teeth, which are blunt and flattened like a sheep's; Archosargus probatocephalus was a common fish in Atlantic and Gulf markets through the nineteenth century and appears often in American cookbooks of the period; oyster sauce with baked or boiled fish was routine in that era, when oysters were still cheap and plentiful rather than a luxury. Pairing the veal with sorrel is an older European habit — the leaf's sharp oxalic tang was a common foil for rich, fatty meat.