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Smelts Brochette, Vert-Pre
Cut the heads and tails off fifteen good-sized, fresh smelts, cut in half-inch pieces, then cut same number pieces lean bacon as the fish, and exactly same size. Season smelts with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika, and arrange smelts and bacon alternately on six skewers. Have on plate a tablespoon oil, roll skewers in it, then gently roll in bread crumbs. Arrange on a double broiler, broil on slow fire for eight minutes on each side, remove and dress on hot dish. Pour a vert-pre sauce on a hot dish, arrange smelts over and serve very hot.
A skewered broil that depends on two things the original leaves unsaid: what vert-pré sauce is, and the fact that bacon takes longer to cook than fish. Read the timing point before you light the broiler.
- Vert-préLiterally "green meadow." In kitchens of this period it means either a green herb butter (softened butter worked with blanched, squeezed spinach or parsley purée, lemon and seasoning) or the same butter thinned with a little stock into a sauce. Filippini gives no formula here, so use whichever of the two suits the plate; either is spooned onto the hot dish and the skewers laid over it, never poured on top.
- Smelt size"Good-sized" smelts means the larger end of the run, big enough to yield half-inch chunks that stay on a skewer. Whole smelts are often eaten bones and all, but once cut into pieces the backbone becomes an obstacle, so fillet or at least gut and bone them first.
- BaconUse thin-cut and render it briefly in a dry pan until the fat starts to run but the slice is still limp. Raw squares of modern bacon may not cook through in the time the fish needs, and thick-cut will still be flabby when the smelts are done.
- The timingEight minutes a side is far too long for half-inch pieces of fish. Three to four minutes a side under a hot broiler, or over coals, is enough; the crumbs should be browned and the fish just opaque. Overcooked smelt goes dry and cottony.
- Double broilerNot a double boiler. A hinged wire broiler basket that clamps the food between two grids so the whole thing can be flipped without the skewers falling apart. A wire rack set on a sheet pan, turned with tongs, does the same job.
- Slow fireFor broiling this means keeping the food well back from the heat so the crumbs colour at the same rate the fish cooks. Close to a modern broiler element the coating burns before the centre sets.
- Oil and crumbsA tablespoon of oil on a plate is enough only if the skewers are rolled, not dipped. Use dry fine crumbs rather than coarse panko, and press them on lightly; wet crumbs will slide off in the basket.
- YieldSix skewers. Serve two per person as a first course, three as a light main, with the sauce and a wedge of lemon.
Smelt were one of the cheapest fish on the northeastern American market when this book was compiled, running up coastal rivers in enormous spring shoals and turning up on hotel menus in every guise the French repertoire allowed. The two French words in the title are both technical: brochette means simply cooked on a skewer, and vert-pré, "green meadow," is a classical garnish term for anything served with green butter or, in the grill cookery of the same era, with watercress and straw potatoes. Alternating fish with bacon on the skewer is the same logic that produces angels on horseback and larded game birds /emdash lean flesh basted from within by fat that renders as it broils. That a lean spring runfish should be dressed up with a Parisian sauce name and served "very hot" on a warmed platter says a good deal about the period's grand-hotel kitchens, where humble raw material and elaborate French nomenclature met on the same plate.