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Striped Bass, Colmarienne
Scale, cut fins and head off a fresh three-pound striped bass, wipe it well, then split open through the front without separating and remove the spinal bone. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, a teaspoon salt and half a teaspoon pepper, repeatedly turn the fish in the seasoning, arrange on a broiler and slowly cook on a moderate fire for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, spread green butter over the bass, squeeze the juice of quarter of a lemon over, set in the oven for two minutes, then serve.
A plain grilled fish with a compound butter, written for a coal broiler and for a cook who already knows what green butter is. Two points need filling in before you start: what green butter means, and how to translate "a moderate fire" to your equipment.
- Green butter, made firstThe recipe assumes you have it on hand. It is butter creamed with finely chopped parsley (often with chives, tarragon or a little blanched spinach pounded in for colour), seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon. Make it before you light the fire and keep it cold so it holds its shape when it hits the hot fish.
- "Broiler" means a hinged grillIn 1906 this is a wire broiler held over live coals, not the overhead element in your oven. Over charcoal, use a medium bed you can hold a hand above for four or five seconds. Under a modern broiler, set the rack about 4 inches from the element and expect the skin side to need the longer stretch.
- Timing and donenessSix minutes a side suits a butterflied 3-lb fish opened flat, which is thinner than it sounds. Go by the flesh: opaque, just parting from the bone line, 130-135F at the thickest part. The two minutes in the oven at the end is only to melt the butter, not to cook further.
- Splitting the fish"Split open through the front without separating" means butterflying from the belly so the two sides stay joined along the back, then lifting out the backbone and rib bones. A fishmonger will do this if asked for a butterflied or kited bass.
- Sourcing the bassWild striped bass is tightly regulated for recreational anglers and commercial sale varies by state, so what you will usually find is farmed hybrid striped bass, which runs smaller than 3 lb. Two 1.5-lb hybrids, or a whole branzino or black sea bass of similar weight, take the same treatment.
- Seasoning on the plateA tablespoon of oil, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for a whole 3-lb fish is correct once you account for the skin and the bone; it is not as heavily salted as it reads. Turning the fish repeatedly in it on the plate seasons and coats it in one motion.
- YieldA 3-lb bass, boned, serves three as a main course or four as part of a longer meal.
Names like Colmarienne belong to the French restaurant vocabulary that American cookbooks of the 1900s absorbed wholesale, in which a dish is labelled after a place, a person or a patron and the label is expected to signal the garnish rather than the method; the name is often linked to Colmar in Alsace, though that reading is traditional rather than documented. What actually defines the plate is the green butter, a cousin of beurre maitre d'hotel that appears in period French kitchen manuals as a standard finish for grilled fish and steaks. The striped bass is the American element: it was an abundant Atlantic coast fish, a staple of New York markets and hotel menus in this era, and a book called The International Cook Book putting it under a French banner is doing exactly what such books were for -- teaching a domestic cook to serve a local fish the way a restaurant would.