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Mullets Dressed with Fine Herbs
Mix Trim and place the mullets on a saucepan, buttered, season with pepper and salt, strew over them chopped mushrooms, shallot and parsley, moisten with two glasses of sherry, and a large spoonful of brown sauce. with the herb sauce a little essence of anchovy and the juice of half a lemon; one spoonful of chopped and blanched parsley. Pour over the mullets and send to the table.
The typesetting here has collapsed: the phrase beginning "Mix" belongs with the sauce at the end, not at the head of the recipe. Read it as two stages — braise the fish in wine and brown sauce, then finish that liquid with anchovy, lemon and parsley before pouring it back over.
- The missing instructionThe text never says to cook the fish, but a buttered pan, wine and brown sauce point to a covered braise on the stove, which is what the specified saucepan implies. Small whole mullet take roughly 12-15 minutes at a bare simmer; the flesh should just part from the backbone.
- Which mulletThis most likely means red mullet, the small firm-fleshed fish of the French repertoire, rather than the American grey or striped mullet, though the recipe itself gives no indication. Grey mullet is oilier and coarser and will taste quite different in this sauce; small red snapper or porgy are closer in character.
- "Two glasses of sherry"A wine glass of the period is 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so this is about half a cup in total. Use a dry fino or amontillado; cream sherry will make the sauce cloying.
- Brown sauceNot the bottled condiment. This is sauce espagnole — a brown roux moistened with veal or beef stock and reduced. "A large spoonful" probably means a serving spoon, perhaps two tablespoons. Reduced, well-seasoned demi-glace from a good stock is the practical substitute.
- Essence of anchovyA thin commercial anchovy extract sold by the bottle, sharper and saltier than modern paste. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or one mashed fillet, gives the same effect. Add it off the heat and taste before adding any further salt.
- Blanched parsleyThe final parsley is dropped into boiling water for a few seconds, refreshed and squeezed dry before chopping. This fixes the colour so the green stays bright against the brown sauce rather than turning drab.
- Fines herbesThe title promises fine herbs but the list is mushroom, shallot and parsley — a duxelles-leaning mixture rather than the chervil-tarragon-chive-parsley of classic fines herbes. Chop the mushrooms and shallot fine so they melt into the liquid rather than sitting on the fish.
- Finishing the sauceLift the fish out and keep it warm, reduce the pan liquid by about a third, then stir in the anchovy, lemon juice and parsley. Poured over as written without reduction the sauce will be thin and winey.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number of fish; the quantities of wine and sauce would suit about four small whole fish.
Red mullet was a prestige fish in nineteenth-century European cookery, valued highly enough that it was often cooked and served whole with the liver left in, a practice inherited from French kitchens and admired by Victorian gastronomes. The treatment here — mushroom, shallot and parsley moistened with wine and a spoonful of espagnole, then sharpened with anchovy and lemon — belongs to the professional French repertoire that English-language household compilations drew on, often compressing an elaborate method into a single dense paragraph. Its reliance on two prepared components, brown sauce and essence of anchovy, points to a kitchen that expected a stockpot going and a store cupboard of bottled flavourings. The scrambled sentences in this printing suggest text set at speed with little proofreading.