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Striped Bass, Mariniere
Neatly trim and wipe two fresh striped bass of one and a half pounds each. Place them in a frying pan with half ounce butter, one teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper, half gill white wine and one gill hot water. Cover the dish with a sheet of buttered paper. Boil for five minutes on the range, then set in the oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove from the oven, lift up the paper, add six freshly opened medium oysters or fresh mussels, six cooked shrimp, six heads canned mushrooms. Cover again with the same paper and replace the fish in the oven for ten minutes more. Remove, lift up the paper, remove the fish with a skimmer, place on a large dish, pour the contents of the pan over the fish and serve.
A whole-fish braise in the French manner, cooked under buttered paper rather than a lid. The measurements are pre-standard and the oven temperature is left unsaid, so both need translating.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup and one gill of hot water is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon; a full 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne on three pounds of fish is assertive but not unreasonable.
- The ovenNo temperature is given. A moderately hot oven, somewhere around 375-400F, is a reasonable modern choice for the twenty minutes of oven time indicated, but the figure is inferred, not stated.
- The buttered paperA sheet of paper, buttered so it does not stick, laid over the pan in place of a lid; it works like a cartouche, holding steam close to the fish while letting the liquid reduce slightly, which a tight lid will not do. Parchment is the direct modern equivalent; foil is not, since it seals.
- An ovenproof panThe recipe moves the same frying pan from range to oven. Use a wide sauté pan or oval fish pan with an ovenproof handle, big enough that the two fish lie flat and unstacked.
- The fishTwo whole striped bass of 1 1/2 lb each, scaled, gutted and gilled. Ask the fishmonger to do it. Wild striped bass is subject to seasonal and size regulations in several states; farmed hybrid striped bass of this size is the easy substitute.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockTwenty-five minutes total (five on the range, ten in the oven, ten more after the garnish goes in) is a fair estimate for fish this size. Cooks aiming for a moist result check at the thickest point behind the head for 130-135F, with the flesh just parting from the backbone, though the FDA guidance for fish is 145F. Whole fish carry over several degrees while you plate them.
- The garnish goes in late for a reasonThe oysters or mussels, cooked shrimp and mushrooms get only the final ten minutes. The shrimp are already cooked and are simply being warmed; ten minutes is the outside limit before they tighten. If your oysters are large, count on them shrinking noticeably.
- Heads of mushrooms"Heads" means whole caps, stems removed. Canned button mushrooms were commonly called for in kitchens of this period; six small fresh caps, briefly sauteed first, give a better result and no tinny note.
- Yield and servingTwo 1 1/2 lb whole fish serve four. The pan liquor is poured over unstrained and unthickened, so serve in shallow bowls with bread, and lift the fillets off the bone at the table.
Marinière means, roughly, in the manner of the boatman — it is the feminine of marinier, boatman or bargeman — a French shorthand for anything finished with white wine and shellfish, most familiar now in moules marinière. Applied to a whole fish, as here, it signals the same treatment scaled up: the fish poached in its own liquor with wine, then dressed with oysters or mussels, shrimp and mushrooms, the standard garnish trio of the classical repertoire. Striped bass is the American element. It was the great prestige fish of the New York market in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hauled from the Hudson and the Long Island shore and treated by Delmonico's and its rivals with the ceremony a French kitchen would have reserved for turbot or sole. The method assumes a cook who owns a fish pan and thinks nothing of buttering a sheet of paper to fit it.