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Wall-Eyed Pike Sautes
Wash and thoroughly wipe three small fresh wall-eyed pike, season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly baste with a little milk, then slightly roll in flour. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, add fish one beside another and gently cook for six minutes on each side. Dress on a dish, squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon and sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A plain pan-fried fish, and the whole thing rests on getting a dry surface and a hot pan. The original's fat quantity is the one figure worth ignoring.
- "Three small" pikeProbably whole pan-dressed fish of about a pound or less each, scaled and gutted, heads on or off as you like. Walleye fillets work equally well; 6 to 8 oz each, cooked 3 to 4 minutes per side rather than six.
- Six minutes a sideThat is right for a whole small fish about an inch and a half at the thickest point, and far too long for a thin fillet. Judge by the flesh at the backbone turning opaque and flaking, or 145F on an instant-read thermometer.
- One tablespoon of butter is not enoughFor three fish in a single pan you want 3 to 4 tablespoons, and a mix of butter and a neutral oil holds up better because butter alone browns hard before the second side is done. Wipe the pan and add fresh fat if it darkens.
- "Baste with a little milk"This is a dip, not a baste: the milk wets the surface so the flour clings. Pat the fish dry first, then milk, then flour, and shake off the excess or the coating goes pasty.
- Pan and crowdingCast iron or heavy stainless over medium-high, and the fish should not touch each other despite "one beside another." Cook in two batches if your pan is under 12 inches; steam between the fish stops the flour from crisping.
- "A sound lemon"Simply a firm, unblemished one. Squeeze it at the table rather than in the pan, so the acid does not soften the crust.
- YieldThree small whole fish serve three, or two generously. Boiled or steamed potatoes and the pan butter poured over would suit it.
Walleye, commonly called wall-eyed pike in North America into the twentieth century despite being a perch rather than a pike, was one of the great commercial catches of the Great Lakes, and it turns up in American and Canadian cookbooks of the period as a matter of course rather than as a delicacy. The treatment here is the French sauté à la meunière -- the name is traditionally explained as the miller's wife's method, after the light dusting of flour -- finished with lemon and parsley. That a Great Lakes freshwater fish is handled by a classical French technique is characteristic of the kind of book this is, where regional American ingredients were routinely dressed in the classical vocabulary of professional kitchens of the era.