Broiled Halibut
Season the slices with salt and white pepper. The slices should be about an inch thick, and for every three pounds, two and one-half tablespoonfuls of butter, lay the slices of halibut in melted butter for half an hour, having them well covered on both sides. Roll in flour and broil for fourteen minutes over a clear fire. Serve on a hot dish, garnishing with parsley and lemon.
A straightforward broiled fish that depends almost entirely on managing heat and thickness. The instructions assume a wire broiler held over live coals, which changes the timing more than anything else in the recipe.
- The fire, translatedA "clear fire" is coals burned down past flame to steady red heat, giving radiant heat from below. Under a modern gas or electric broiler the heat comes from above, so set the rack 4 inches from the element and preheat it fully.
- Fourteen minutes is too longInch-thick halibut steaks are done at 6 to 8 minutes total, turned once, or when the flesh is just opaque at the centre and reads about 130-135F. Halibut is very lean and goes dry and cottony the moment it overcooks; the original timing suits open coals with heat losses a modern broiler does not have.
- Butter quantityTwo and a half tablespoons for three pounds of fish is a coating, not a bath. Melt it, brush or turn the slices in it so both faces are filmed, and let them sit the half hour at cool room temperature or in the refrigerator.
- The flour coatingRoll in flour only just before the fish meets the heat. Flour applied early absorbs the butter and turns to paste; applied late it dries into a thin crust that browns and helps the fish release from the grate.
- White pepper, deliberatelyWhite pepper was standard on pale fish and pale sauces so no black flecks showed. Black pepper can be substituted if appearance does not concern you, though the two are not identical in flavour.
- Keeping it wholeOil the broiler rack or grate before the fish touches it, and turn the steaks once only, with a wide spatula. Halibut flakes into large plates that separate readily when disturbed.
- YieldThree pounds of steaks serves six generously as a main course. The recipe specifies a hot dish, sensible with a fish this lean, which cools quickly.
Halibut's firm, thick flesh made it one of the few fish that could be cut into steaks and handled on a broiler grate without falling apart, and broiled halibut is a common fixture of the fish chapters of American household cookbooks of the period. The instruction to broil over a "clear fire" points to kitchens where the coal or wood range was still the primary heat source. Atlantic halibut was heavily overfished, the eastern fishery having declined sharply well before 1900, and most halibut in markets today is Pacific.