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Striped Bass, Parisienne
Procure a small, fresh striped bass of three and a half pounds; cut off the head, trim the fins, scale and wipe well, split in two through the back and remove the spinal bone. Slice exceedingly fine two small onions, place in a frying pan with a tablespoon butter and lay the fish on top. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Cover the fish with a plate, set on a brisk range and let cook for ten minutes. Lift up the plate, add all round the fish two peeled and crushed red tomatoes, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and half gill white wine. Cover again and set the fish in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, carefully dress on a hot dish, pour the garnishing around, decorate with six heart-shaped bread croutons and serve.
A quick braise dressed up with a French name: the fish steams over onions on the stovetop, then finishes in the oven with tomato and wine. The whole thing is about 30 minutes of cooking, which for a 3½-pound fish split flat is generous.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two of them is ½ teaspoon pepper. A gill is half a cup, making half a gill ¼ cup of white wine.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature, as was usual for the period. A hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, suits the aim of reducing the wine and tomato rather than stewing them.
- One pan throughoutThe fish never leaves the frying pan, so use a heavy skillet or sauté pan that can go into the oven. The plate laid on top is the lid — a plate that fits inside the rim traps steam better than a loose cover.
- The timing to watchTen minutes on a brisk range plus twenty in the oven risks overcooking a split bass. Check at fifteen minutes in the oven; the flesh should just separate from the bone. Cooks who like fish barely set pull it around 130-135F, below the usual 145F food-safety guidance for fish.
- Buying the fishAsk the fishmonger to scale, gut and butterfly it through the back, removing the backbone — it is fiddly work at home. Wild striped bass is subject to size and season limits in many US states; farmed hybrid striped bass runs 1½–3 lb and two of them work as well as one large fish.
- The tomatoes"Peeled and crushed red tomatoes" means ripe fresh tomatoes, skinned by blanching, seeds and juice included. Out of season, drained canned whole tomatoes crushed by hand are closer to the intent than a watery winter tomato.
- CroutonsCut heart shapes from firm white bread and fry them in butter until crisp, not toasted. They are there to soak the pan liquid, so add them at the table rather than letting them sit in it.
- YieldA 3½-pound whole fish feeds three, four at a stretch with bread and a green vegetable.
"Parisienne" on a turn-of-the-century American menu rarely meant anything precise -- it signalled butter, wine and a tidy garnish, the vocabulary of the restaurant kitchen applied to a local fish. Striped bass was that local fish along much of the Atlantic seaboard, abundant enough in the Hudson and Chesapeake to be everyday market food, and its firmness suits this kind of shallow braise better than a flaking cod would. The technique itself is older than the name: fish laid on a bed of sliced onion and sweated under a plate before finishing in the oven is a familiar a l'etuvee method, and heart-shaped bread croutons were a common garnish of the period, appearing around dishes from sweetbreads to stewed kidneys.