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Weakfish Saute Au Cerfeuil
Scale, trim and wipe a very fresh weakfish of three pounds. Heat two tablespoons oil in a frying pan, season fish with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, add it to the pan and gently fry for five minutes on each side, then set in the oven for ten minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish, free the pan of oil, add half ounce good butter, then toss on the fire until of a nice brown colour. Add the leaves of three branches chervil and the juice of half a sound lemon, lightly toss, pour over the fish and serve. CHICKEN (OR TURKEY) CROQUETTES, SAUCE PERIGUEUX Pick out all the meat from the turkey left over from yesterday, cut into small dice, then proceed to finish the croquettes. Dress on a dish, adjust a paper frill at end of each croquette, pour a hot sauce perigueux around and serve.
A whole fish cooked meunière-style, finished with browned butter, chervil and lemon. The method is sound; the vocabulary and the missing oven temperature are what need translating.
- The fish itselfWeakfish (Cynoscion regalis), also called squeteague or grey sea trout, is a lean, fine-flaked Atlantic fish still landed but rarely sold outside the East Coast. Sea trout, striped bass, black bass or a whole branzino of similar weight behave the same way in the pan.
- Pan sizeA three-pound whole fish needs a 14-inch skillet or an oval fish pan, and two tablespoons of oil is barely enough to keep it from sticking. Use a well-seasoned or nonstick surface, and slide two spatulas under the fish when you turn it.
- The oven stepNo temperature is given, as was normal in 1906. A hot oven of about 400F for ten minutes finishes a three-pound fish begun in the pan; check that the flesh at the thickest point beside the backbone reaches 145F, or lifts cleanly from the bone.
- Half ounce of butterOne tablespoon. It browns fast in a pan that has just come off the heat and out of the oven, so watch it: you want beurre noisette, nut-brown and fragrant, not black.
- Free the pan of oilPour off the frying oil entirely before the butter goes in. Cooking oil left behind dilutes the butter and prevents it browning properly, which is the whole point of the finish.
- Chervil"Three branches" means three sprigs, leaves stripped, roughly a tablespoon chopped. Chervil is delicate and heat-sensitive, so it goes in off the flame with the lemon juice. Flat parsley with a pinch of tarragon is the usual stand-in when chervil is unavailable.
- YieldA three-pound whole fish yields something over a pound and a half of flesh once head, frame and fins are accounted for: three good portions, or four modest ones.
- The croquette fragmentThe second paragraph is not a complete recipe. It cross-refers to a croquette method given elsewhere in the book and to sauce Périgueux, a Madeira-and-truffle demi-glace. Do not attempt to work from it as printed.
The International Cook Book came out of the Delmonico's tradition, and this dish shows the house style plainly: an American fish handled by an entirely French method. Weakfish is generally said to take its name not from any weakness of flavour but from its tender mouth, which tears easily against a hook, and through the nineteenth century it was one of the cheapest and most abundant fish on the New York and Chesapeake markets. Dressing it au cerfeuil with browned butter and chervil, and printing it under a French title, is the standard move of the period's restaurant cookery: take a common local ingredient and give it the grammar of the Paris kitchen. Chervil, one of the fines herbes quartet with parsley, tarragon and chives, seems to have been more familiar in American cooking then than now, a decline often attributed to the fact that it wilts within a day or two of cutting and does not survive shipping well.