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Striped Bass, Providence
Cut off fins, scale, wash and neatly wipe a very fresh three-pound striped bass, place in a large sautoire with a half gill white wine, gill water, two branches parsley, the juice of a quarter lemon, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover fish with a buttered paper, place lid over pan, cook on fire for five minutes, set in oven for thirty-five minutes, remove, dress on a hot dish and keep hot. Mix in saucepan a tablespoon butter, two tablespoons flour, and stir on fire while heating one minute. strain fish broth into pan, add three-fourths gill milk, then mix until it comes to a boil. Wash and thoroughly drain three-fourths gill oyster crabs, add them to sauce and boil for five minutes. Dilute an egg yolk in a tablespoon cream, add it to sauce, gently mix on fire for one minute, pour sauce and sprinkle a little finely chopped parsley over fish and serve.
A plainly written braise-and-sauce dish that assumes a professional kitchen: no oven temperature, capacity measured in gills, and a garnish that has all but disappeared from the market.
- GillsA US gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup. So the fish goes in with 1/4 cup white wine and 1/2 cup water; the sauce takes 6 tablespoons milk and 6 tablespoons drained oyster crabs.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, wide enough to hold the whole fish flat. Anything oven-safe with a lid and enough floor space will do; a roasting pan covered with foil works.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, and the recipe uses no descriptive term for the oven either. A moderate oven (around 350F) is a reasonable modern guess for a covered braise of this kind; the liquid should barely tremble rather than boil.
- The timingThirty-five minutes may be more than a 3 lb bass needs; check early, and take it out when the flesh just parts from the backbone. Many modern cooks pull fish at 130-140F at the thickest point, though official guidance is 145F.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: parchment cut to the pan, buttered on the side facing the fish, laid directly on it under the lid. It keeps the exposed surface from drying while the fish steams in very little liquid.
- Oyster crabsPea crabs, the soft translucent commensals that live inside live oysters, once sold by the pint in Eastern markets and now very hard to find. Small cooked bay shrimp or picked crabmeat stand in; if substituting, add them at the end rather than boiling five minutes.
- The liaisonThe yolk-and-cream finish is the hinge. Once it goes in, keep the sauce below a simmer — a minute of gentle stirring off strong heat. A boil scrambles the yolk and the sauce breaks into grains.
- YieldA 3 lb whole bass serves three to four as a main course. Skin and lift the fillets at the table rather than portioning across the bone.
The International Cook Book is Alexander Filippini's, and he came out of the Delmonico's kitchen tradition, where American regional produce was handled in French technique. What makes this dish Providence is most likely the oyster crab: the pea crab, Pinnotheres ostreum, lives inside oysters, and the oyster grounds of Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound made them a byproduct that late-nineteenth-century restaurants treated as a luxury, fried in batter or floated in cream sauces. They were scarce and laborious to gather -- a pint meant shucking a great many oysters -- and arrived only where oysters were opened in volume. Striped bass, then as now a great fish of the northeastern inshore waters, was the natural partner.