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Weakfish, Hongroise
Scale, trim off fins and wipe a fresh three-pound weakfish, place in a large sautoire with half ounce butter, half gill white wine, one and a half gills water, juice of quarter of a lemon, two branches parsley, a light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Cover fish with buttered paper, boil on range five minutes, then set in oven thirty-five minutes. Remove, lift up, dress on a hot dish and keep hot.
Mix in a small saucepan one and a half tablespoons melted butter with two light tablespoons flour, heat half a minute, stirring meanwhile. Strain fish liquor through a cheesecloth into this pan, add half gill milk, sharply mix until it comes to a boil, then cook ten minutes. Dilute one egg yolk in a tablespoon cream and add to the sauce. Sharply mix with a whisk while heating two minutes. Remove, pour sauce over the fish and serve.
A classic braise-and-liaison method: the fish poaches in its own scant liquor, which then becomes the sauce. Two things need attention — the oven time, which is long by modern standards, and the yolk finish, which must not boil.
- The yolk is the hingeOnce the egg yolk and cream go in, the sauce must be held below a simmer. Two minutes of whisking over gentle heat thickens it; a boil will curdle it into grains that no amount of whisking will bring back.
- Gills and the liquidA gill is half a cup. Half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup, one and a half gills of water is 3/4 cup, half a gill of milk is 1/4 cup. The fish is braised in shallow liquid, not poached submerged.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; oven thermometers and thermostats were not standard equipment in most kitchens of the period. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, suits a covered braise of this kind.
- Thirty-five minutes is too longA three-pound whole fish is generally cooked through in roughly 20-25 minutes at 350F after its five minutes on the range. Start checking at 20; the flesh should lift cleanly from the backbone. Cook to 145F at the thickest part if following current food-safety guidance.
- Sautoire and buttered paperA sautoire is a straight-sided saute pan with a lid — any wide, shallow pan that holds the fish flat will do. The buttered paper is a cartouche: parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered side down on the fish, to keep the exposed top from drying.
- WeakfishWeakfish (Cynoscion regalis), also called squeteague or grey sea trout, is a soft-fleshed Atlantic fish still landed but rarely sold inland. Any lean, delicate whole white fish of about three pounds — sea trout, striped bass, black sea bass, branzino scaled up — works the same way. The name refers to the fish's tender mouth, which tears at the hook, not to its flavour.
- PaprikaHongroise means Hungarian, and paprika is the whole point of the name. Use a fresh sweet Hungarian paprika; the dull, ancient tin in the back of the cupboard contributes colour and nothing else.
- The sauceOne and a half tablespoons butter to two of flour is a lean, dry roux; against roughly a cup and a quarter of liquid it gives a lightly thickened, pourable sauce, further enriched by the yolk. Strain the fish liquor as directed; bones and parsley stems will otherwise cloud it.
- YieldA three-pound whole fish serves four as a main course.
The suffix a la hongroise in turn-of-the-century restaurant French generally signalled two things: paprika and a cream or sour-cream finish. Hungarian paprika appears to have entered Western European and American professional kitchens in quantity over the later nineteenth century, and by the time this book appeared the label was a familiar formula on hotel menus, applied to chicken, veal, eggs and fish alike. The dish here is really a French braise au vin blanc with a paprika seasoning and a yolk-and-cream liaison — the technique belongs to the Escoffier repertoire, the name is largely marketing. Weakfish is the American element: an abundant, cheap Atlantic coast fish that New York kitchens of the period used heavily, and one that recurs in Filippini's writing, reflecting a Delmonico-trained chef adapting a continental repertoire to what the East Coast markets landed.