ISSUE 44, À LA CRÉOLE, Part 3: Fish & Seafood
The Canon of Classic Gulf Coast Creole cuisine was defined for the most part by three works published between the years 1885 and 1900—La Cuisine Creole, The Creole Cookery Book, and the Times Picayune Cookbook. Yet an enormous number of important recipes were published during those same 15 years in other sources—recipes that increase the body of attested Creole Dishes by nearly 100 percent over those contained the in the trinity of founding texts. I will spend this issue of Foodlore and More (the next six sessions) reprinting many of these neglected recipes. Today, in time for the feast of 7 fishes, we will survey the seafood that distinguished Creole kitchen craft.
Fish & Seafood
Courtbouillon à la Créole No. 1 — Slice and fry some onions in a saucepan; add slices of tomatoes, salt, and pepper clean and scale your fish; cut it in slices; put it in the saucepan with the onions and tomatoes and some water; add a little chopped parsley; cook till the fish ia done; then add a glass of claret or white wine, whichever you prefer; let it boil up, and take out the slices of fish ; place each slice on a piece of toasted bread, skim the sauce and pour over, and serve. [UCB-62]
Creole Courtboullon for Fish No. 2 — Clean your fish and draw it through the gills; put it in a fish boiler; cover it well with water ; add a glass of vinegar, salt, pepper, clove, laurel leaf, onions and carrots sliced, thyme, and parsley; let it boil until the fish is done; remove the fish boiler to the back of the stove, and leave your fish in the courtbouillon till you are ready to serve it. The same courtbouillon can serve as often as it keeps good. You can substitute wine for vinegar — using half wine and half water. Fish au courtbouillon should be served very hot on a folded napkin on a dish surrounded by bunches of parsley. [UCB-62]
Creole Courtbouillon for Sea Fish, No. 3 — Boil in half water and half milk ; salt and pepper. The fish becomes white and firm. Serve with highly seasoned sauces. [UCB-62]
Stephanie’s Fish à la Créole — Scale and clean your fish; draw it through the gills; put it in a fish-boiler; cover it well with water; add a glassful of vinegar, salt, and pepper, clove, laurel leaf, onions and carrots sliced, thyme, and parsley; let it boil until the fish is done; remove the fish-boiler to the back of the stove, and leave your fish in the courtbouillon till you are ready to servo it. If yon prefer you can substitute wine for vinegar, using half wine and half water. Fish au courtbouillon should be served very hot, in a folded napkin, on a dish surrounded by bunches of parsley, with a highly seasoned sauce. [UCB-76]
Fish au Gratin –Take a long, flat dish which you can put on the fire; put a layer of onions cut in round slices in the bottom, and another layer of sliced tomatoes; enough olive-oil to prevent burning; season well with salt and pepper (red is preferable) ; clean and scale your fish, stuff it with a stuffing made of sausage-meat (without sage or spices), chopped oysters, chopped mushrooms, the yolk of an egg, bread crumbs, pepper, and salt well mixed together; lay your fish in the baking-dish, put a large lump of butter on it, and put it in the oven ; moisten it from time generous supply of white wine, and sprinkle with bread crumbs; pour a little of the sauce over the bread crumbs before serving ; garnish your dish with sprigs of parsley and lemon cut in quarters. [UCB-82-83]
Stewed Black Fish or Sea Bass — Clean and scale the fish; fry them whole, and then remove to a stewpan; next pour some water into the frying-pan in which you have fried the fish, and thicken it with a little flour, mixed in cold water. When sufficiently cooked, throw this gravy over the fish and let it stew; season it with cloves, mace, pepper, aud salt, and a little green parsley, chopped fine; about twenty minutes before serving it add a gill of catsup, a little stewed tomato, and a gill of port wine. [UCB-73]
Creole Codfish and Potatoes – Mash cooked salt codfish and potatoes together in the usual way for codfish balls, but instead of balling it up dry, put it in a saucepan with a little onion very finely minced, a small amount of red pepper pod the same way, a spoonful of oil, a raw egg and a spoonful of saffron tea, and stir the mixture over the fire long enough for the eggs in it to be cooked. When turned out into the dish it is about the consistency of freshly mashed potatoes, but of a yellow butter color; it is served for breakfast or lunch. American codfish balls are an object of aversion to the Creole cooks, and perhaps to some others besides, and cause them so much annoyance that they never make any croquette in the round shape nor form any sort of compound in that fashion for fear by any mischance any person should for a moment suppose that it was a codfish ball, and they were the makers. The foregoing are the only examples I can call to mind of the use of potatoes in any Creole dishes. They make meat stews with squashes cut up in them and egg-plants, cucumbers, okra, green peas and string beans, but rarely use potatoes. [HMC-382]
Croaker in Batter, Sauce Remoulade – The croaker is a southern sea-fish, small, something like white perch—good for frying and broiling. Split the fish lengthwise, remove the bone, salt well, dip in thin batter . . . and fry in lard not too hot. Serve with Remoulade sauce and some special form of potatoes. [White-CFP-121]
Baked Red Grouper, Sauce Andalouse – Take two of these fishes weighing six or eight pounds each. When cleaned and scaled put them in a baking pan with salt, a little water, some cut up vegetables, and fat from the stock boiler. Bake about ten minutes, then peel off the upper skin, which is coarse and rough, baste the fish with the liquor in the pan and let it bake brown. This fish needs a long time to cook—nearly or quite an hour. Serve with the sauce at the side. Sauce Andalouse is in effect a mixture of espagnole with tomato sauce seasoned with red pepper chutney. When the fish is done and take up put into the pan it was baked in two pounds of tomatoes, a dozen cloves, a spoonful of finely minced onion, half a bay leaf and a chopped red pepper. Add a pint of brown sauce, if at hand, if not water and brown thickening, and let simmer inside the range a short time. Strain through a coarse gravy strainer into a saucepan. Set it over the fire, at the side, to continue gently boiling, and skim off the grease as it rises. Add salt if necessary. [HMC-254]
Halibut Neck à la Créole – 3lbs. halibut neck, Tomatoes, 1 oz. butter, Vegetables and seasonings. Halibut neck is esteemed quite highly by gourmands. It is generally much cheaper than the more solid parts of the fish, and is delicious when cooked as follows: wash and trim three pounds of halibut neck; put it into a dripping-pan, with two ounces of chopped onion, one teaspoonful of salt, one saltspoonful of chopped garlic, half that quantity of white pepper, and oe pound of peeled sliced tomato, either fresh or canned; dust the fish well with powdered crackers or dried bread-crumbs, dot it over with one tablespoonful of butter, and bake it twenty minutes in a quick over. When done, lay the fish on a hot platter, put the tomato, etc., around it, and garnish it with a few cresses or sprigs of parsley. [Corson-New York Cooking School-1879-155]
Broiled Mackerel No. 1 — Prepare and clean your fish; sprinkle it with salt and pepper envelop it in buttered paper, broil it on a gridiron, and serve it with a maitre d’ hotel sauce. [Unrivalled Cook Book, 59]
Broiled Mackerel à la Créole, No. 2 — Clean and prepare your fish; split it in the back; wrap it in oiled paper, and broil it on the gridiron. Just before serving, remove the paper, and put in the fish a lump of fresh butter, in which you have kneaded some paraley, salt, and pepper. The heat of the fish melts the butter. [UCB-60]
Broiled Pompano—Tartar Sauce –The pompano is a southern sea fish somewhat rare and high priced It has a decided flavor of its own that suggests the taste of black walnuts when broiled It has the flattened shape of the sunfish and scales almost as tine as those of the mackerel. Scrape the skin thoroughly. The smallest size, weighing about one pound, may be broiled whole in the wire broiler previously greased. Split the large ones down the back and through the head. Broil the cut side first—8 or 10 minutes--brush over with fresh butter and dredge with salt and pepper, then broil the skin tide till done. Serve on a hot dish Squeeze a little lemon juice over, and serve cold tartar sauce in a sauce boat separately, or, for individual orders, the hot tartar sauce in the same dish [Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 249]
Pompano à la Carondelet – Cut four fish into quarter of a pound slices, boil them in salted water containing thyme, bay leaf, parsley branches and vinegar; at the first boil remove them from the hot fire to let quiver on the side of the range for fifteen minutes; when finished, drain and suppress the skins, keeping the meat as whole as possible. Fry a medium sized onion in butter, dust with curry powder and moisten with court bouillon and white wine; thicken this stock with thick béchamel, and reduce it properly; stir in egg yolks and fresh butter, then strain the whole through a tammy. Dress the fish; pour the sauce over and surround either with fried milts or mussels a la villeroi. [Ranhoffer, The Epicurean, 451]
Broiled Salmon à la Créole — Take either the tail or slices of salmon, cut crosswise; prepare them nicely, and let them soak in olive- oil with salt, thyme, laurel leaf, eschalottes, and parsley; put the slices on the gridiron; baste them with the oil in which they have steeped; when done, remove the skin from the slices, arrange them on a dish, and serve with a white sauce with capers, or with sliced pickles. [UCB-69]
Salmon à la Créole - Young salmon are eaten, cooked au courtbouillon with red wine, fried, or, better still, cooked in a little consommé with a little champagne, to which you add some slices of lean cooked ham, a soup bunch, chopped eschalottes, salt, and pepper. [UCB-71]
Roast Salmon à la Créole — Clean and scale your fish; lard it and cover with slices of bacon; roast it on a spit; when it is done serve it on a puree of sorrel, or a puree of finely chopped ham and mushrooms. [UCB-72]
Smoked Salmon à la Créole — Slice your salmon, fry it in oil, drain well on brown paper; squeeze lemon juice over it, and serve without any other preparation. [UCB-72]
Shad à la Créole – Raise the fillets from a shad, remove the skin, and cut the fish into half inch thick slices; pare them half-heart shape (each one should weight four ounces after being pared). Cook them in a mirepoix stock with white wine, and when done grain off the stock to reduce it with valpouté sauce. Dress the fillets of shad in a cirecle, and fill in the empty space with rice a la creole, and surround the fish with fried shad milts or broiled shad roe. [Ranhofer-Epicurean-457]
Sheepshead à la Créole – Put one chopped onion and one very finely chopped green pepper —the seed extracted—in a stewpan; brown them in a half gill of oil for five minutes, then add one tomato, cut in pieces, four sliced mushrooms, a good bouquet, and a clove of garlic. Season well with a pinch of salt and half a pinch of pepper, then moisten with half a pint of Espagnole sauce. Cut a fish weighing three pounds in six slices, lay them flat in the stewpan, with three tablespoonfuls of mushroom liquor (if any handy), and let cook for one hour on a very slow fire. When ready to serve, sprinkle over with a pinch of chopped parsley, and decorate with six pieces of heart-shaped crouton. (All fish a la Creole are prepared the same way, the time allowed for cooking depending on the firmness of the fish. The fish can be left whole instead of dividing in slices, if desired.) [Fillipini-100 Ways Cooking Fish-1891-47]
Baked Red Snapper à la Créole — For a fish of 3 or 4 pounds prepare this stuffing: 1 can of tomatoes, 6 onions chopped fine, 1 cup of dry bread-crumbs, 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce, red and black pepper and salt, plenty of butter. Stuff your fish with this dressing and sew up. Lay it flat in the pan and cover top with the remaining stuffing. Spread butter on this to make it brown nicely. Bake one hour. [Cook, Breakfast Dinner Supper, 109]
Red Snapper à la Mobile – Pare the filets lifed from the fish, suppress the skin, and cutm up into half heart-shaped pieces; make an incision on one side, and fill this with forcemeat prepared as follows: Fry colorless in butter some shallots, mushrooms, chives, and parsley; add to it a tomato puree, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and mix in a little béchamel sauce. Lay the fish on a buttered dish, and cover with a Chivry sauce. [Ranhoffer, The Epicurean, 454]
Roast Sturgeon à la Créole — Take a medium-sized sturgeon or slices of any large fish; lard it well with spiced lard; let it steep in white wine, with salt, pepper, and spices; roast it on the spit, basting with the marinade in which it has steeped, and serve with a sauce piquante. [UCB-71]
Fricasseed Prawns à la Créole – Shell a gallon of prawns, put on a plate melt in a sautoir four ounces of butter with two tablespoonfuls of chopped shallots and two bruised cloves of garlic; fry slightly brown; add a pint of espagnole sauce, a pint of stewed tomatoes freed of seeds, sweet chillies, a little cayenne pepper, and half a pint of good white wine; stir, and boil down until pretty consistent; add the prawns, boil a few minutes longer, finish with the juice of a lemon, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley; mix well by tossing in the sautoir; dish up and serve with plain boiled rice in a separate dish. [Deliee-FAC-1884-196]
Lyonase of Shrimp à la Créole – Take about equal quantities of onions cut small, tomatoes, and shrimp cooked and hulled. Fry the onions, put in the tomatoes and let cook together; add the shrimp and stir up with a few spoonfuls of espagnolc sauce and salt and pepper. It is a thick mixture; serve it heaped in a flat dish with ornamental strips of toast. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Shrimp Salad – Cut up the shrimps and prepare about an equal measure of minced white lettuce, endive or celery, according to the season. Put them into a bowl together. Add a small amount of onion finely minced and labout four times as much parsley. Put in then a good spoonful of pepper relish or hot sauce, which is the same as minced piccalilly or minced pickled peppers, etc. Then olive oil enough to moisten the salad and a like amount of vinegar and stir together till well mixed. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Boiled Shrimps à la Créole — Wash the shrimps carefully, and boil them in salt and water, to which you add several pods of ripe red pepper; serve for breakfast; heap the shrimps in the dish and serve, surrounded by crimped parsley. This is a famous New Orleans dish. [UCB-77]
Pickled Shrimps à la Créole — Boil and peel your shrimps and put them in a bottle; pour over them the best vinegar and spices. In twenty-four hours they are ready for use. [UCB-77]
Shrimp with Risotto – This is a good example of a Creole dish, and of Creole frugality in their domestic cooking; it is shrimp and rice, the shrimp cooked first and taken up, and the rice cooked in and flavored by the same water. Wash a quart or more of fresh, uncooked shrimp in plenty of water to free them from sand; then drop them into boiling water, enough to cover; put in two bay leaves, a spoonful salt, and same of minced onion, and a piece of red pepper pod, and boil about half an hour; then strain the water into another saucepan, and to a quart of it allow a heaping cup of rice, and cook with a lid on till done. The shrimps, which are nearly white and transparent while raw, turn light red in cooking, and they give color enough to the rice without other addition; but to serve at a Creole table it will be necessary to add saffron infusion enough to make it yellow. Shape the rice by pressing into cups, and turn out a shape into a dish. Remove the shells from the shrimps; moisten with a spoonful of the liquor, reserved for the purpose; serve them placed around the shape of rice. Risotto is an Italian word. Curry powder can be used in place of saffron. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Shrimps au Gratin à la Créole — Boil your shrimps in salt and water, and peel them; put a layer of butter, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper in a deep dish; then a layer of shrimps; cover with powdered bread crumbs, bake, and serve. [UCB-77]
Shrimps Stewed in Tomatoes — Boil your shrimps in salt and water; peel and take off the heads; slice some onions in a saucepan, with a little lard; add sliced tomatoes, a little flour to thicken it; season with salt and cayenne pepper; put your shrimps in this sauce; cook a few moments and serve. [UCB-77]
Shrimp à la Bordelaise – Boil the shrimps in water with seasonings, as above stated, when done strain off the liquor and boil it down; to half a cupful of it add a cupful of espagnole sauce, and half as much claret and a pinch of cayenne; put in the picked shrimps and stew together. Serve with croutons of bread fried in oil. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Shrimp or Crab Mayonnaise (Madame Eugene) — Boil and peel your shrimps or crabs; make a rich mayonnaise dressing, and serve over them ; garnish your dish with tender lettuce leaves. [UCB-68]
Shrimp sur le Grill – Broiled shrimp. Take the largest already cooked and divested of their shells; dredge with salt and black pepper; put them in the wire oyster broiler; brush both sides with oil; broil quickly, and serve on toast with quartered lemon. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Shrimp a la Brochette – String the shrimps already cooked and hulled, on iron skewers, and cut straight down to make them of even size; dip in beaten egg on a plate, and then in cracker dust, and fry in hot oil. Serve on thin toast, withdrawing the skewer as they are served. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Shrimps and Oysters – Of the following ways of serving the shrimp, it may be said that the broil and the brochette (skewer) are acceptable to nearly all people at any meal though best for breakfast. The others are more easily disposed of for lunch than for dinner. And it should not be forgotten that shrimp are good enough served plain with the common cruet seasonings. [HMC]
Fricasseed Prawns a la Creole —Shell a gallon of prawns, put on a plate; melt in a sautoir four ounces of butter with two tablespoonfuls of chopped shallots and two bruised cloves of garlic; fry slightly brown; add a pint of espagnole sauce, a pint of st.e\ved tomatoes freed of seeds, sweet chillies, a little cayenne pepper, and half a pint of good white wine ; stir, and boil down until pretty consistent; add the prawns, boil a few minutes longer, finish with the juice of a lemon, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley; mix well by tossing in the sautoir; dish up and serve with plain boiled rice in a separate dish. Deliee, The Franco-American Cookery book, 196.
Pan Oysters – Lay in a thin pie-tin or dripping-pan half a pint of large oysters, or more if required; have the pan large enough so that each oysters will lie flat on the bottom; put in over them a little oyster liquor, but not enough to float; place them carefully in a hot over and just heat them through thoroughly—do not bake them—which will be in three to five minutes, according to the fire; take them up and place on toast; first moistened with the hot juice from the pan. Are a very good substitute for oysters roasted in the shell, the slow cooking, bringing out the flavor. (French Restaurant, N.O.) [The White House Cook Book, 64-65]
Stewed Oysters – Strain the liquor from one quart of oysters and let it come to a boil, also examine the oysters to see that no particles of shell are left clinging to them; mix together a scant tablespoonful of butter and a heaping one of flour over the fire, stir into the oyster liquor, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the yolks of three raw eggs, two tablespoonfuls of oil and the juice of a lemon. Put the oysters into the sauce and cook until their edges curl. They should be served as soon as done, and make a nice addition should an extra dish be needed. [Irene H., “Creole Cookery: Another Dainty Dish,” St. Louis Republic (August 10, 1890).]
Oysters à la Brochette –Run a dozen or more of oysters on a skewer^ drop them into the frying kettle of hot oil or lard for three or four minutes to shrink them, then finish by broiling on th,e gridrion over hot coals. Serve on buttered toast, withdrawing the skewer, and garnish with lemon and parsley. [Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Crayfish – The most vicioos looking halfbushel that can be found in a Southern market is the basket of salt water crayfish, which has a place at many of the turtle stalls or frog butchers places of business; they are evidently a not very plentiful commodity, for the proportion in sight compared with such other things as crabs and shrimp, is very small, and yet is equal to the demand, as the price asked for them proves. They look as little like anything jjood to eat as possible, more like noisome insects to be avoided. They are in color a mixture of bloodi ed and black, shaped like a lobster, though no larger than a Southern shrimp, but they refuse to double themselves up as the lobster and shrimp do, but spread out both claws and tail in an attitude of eternal obstreperousness. That is why the dealers always handle them either with tongs or claw-hammers. Perhaps they look better to some people, but the truth is the crayfish is something of a thorn in the side of American cookery, and has caused many of us who are interested in it too much annoyance to allow any care for its merits. The Creoles use them, and by some they are thought to be peculiar to Creole cookery, which, however, is not the case; the custom in this regard being but a continuance of French customs, for of all the ornamental dishes of fish described in French culinary works, one-half at least would require of us to produce them according Jo rule, to use crayfish in one form or another; crayfish tails and button mushrooms; crayfish tails and oysters; crayfish shells pounded in a mortar and mixed In a sauce; crayfish pounded and worked into butter to make crayfish butter; a fine crayfish on a skewer; a ragout of crayfish and mussels—these and forty other cries of crayfish, crayfish, where there are no crayfish, and where nobody could be bribed or coaxed into eating a crayfish if there were cause enough for us to take the ground that crayfish are not much account anyhow. Jessup Whitehead, Hotel Meat Cooking, 385.
Stuffed Crabs à la Créole — Boil your hard-shell crabs; remove the shells ; take out the sand bag and the spongy substances from the sides ; take out the meat and fat carefully, and chop them up with chopped onions, minced ham, bread crumbs, butter or oils, suet, and plenty of red pepper; bind it with beaten yolk of egg, and fry it well; clean the upper shell of the crab, and stuff it with this crab stuffing; sprinkle over a little bread crumbs (powdered) ; put on each stuffed crab a lump of butter, and return it to the stove to bake a few minutes, and serve. [UCB-68]
Softshell Crabs à la Créole — Pull off the spongy substances from the sides; take out the sand bags; wash well, wipe, dry, dip them in olive-oil, and broil quickly. Serve with lemon juice squeezed over them. [UCB-68]
Frog's Legs a la Creole -- Wash, drain, and season six pairs of legs, put them in a shallow dish, add juice of one lemon, and after an hour, put two ounces of butter in a stew pan, and one minced onion, one minced green pepper, and cook five minutes. Then put in the legs, cover closely and cook ten minutes. Add four ripe tomatoes, skinned and sliced, half a cup of mushrooms, cover again and cook until tender. Turn into a hot dish and garnish with toast points. (Everyday Housekeeping 5 (1896), 186.)