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Sweetbreads, Chops, and Cutlets
These are not divided, one being served to each person. FISH.
A broad silver knife should be used in serving fish. Serve as little of the bone as possible, and be careful not to break the flakes. Halibut or Salmon. A middle cut, or thick piece, of halibut or salmon should be placed on the platter with the skin surface up and the back toward the farther side of the dish. Carve in thick slices down to the bone, slip the knife under and remove them. Then remove the bone, and serve the lower portion in the same manner.
A thin slice of halibut should be laid on the platter with the flesh side up. Cut next to the bone on each side, divide the fish as required, and leave the bone on the platter.
Mackerel, White-fish, etc. These and other thin fish for broiling should be split down the back before cooking. In serving, divide through the middle lengthwise, and then divide each half into such portions as may be desired. Be careful not to break or crumble them.
Smelts, Perch, and other small pan-fish are served whole. They should be arranged on the dish with heads and tails alternating, or in a circle round a silver cup placed in the centre of the platter and holding the sauce. Or, place two or three on a silver skewer, and serve a skewerful to each person. Small slices and rolled fillets of fish are not divided.
Two subjects on one page. The first is dealt with in a single sentence, and the rest is fish: how to divide it, how to lift it, and how to get it to the plate without wrecking it.
- One each, undividedThese are not divided, one being served to each person. A sweetbread, a chop or a cutlet is itself a portion, which means the kitchen sized the serving and the carver had nothing to decide. It is the simplest rule in the book and it quietly marks the limit of the carver’s authority.
- A fish knife is for lifting, not cuttingA broad silver knife should be used in serving fish. The blade is wide and blunt because an edge tears across the flakes instead of parting them. A wide palette knife or an offset spatula does the identical job, and using a sharp knife is the main reason served fish arrives in pieces.
- The middle cut is two portions deepA middle cut, or thick piece, of halibut or salmon is a cross-section the full width of the fish, bone in, and it is still the best way to buy salmon for a table of eight. Carve down to the bone, slip the knife under and take those slices off, then lift the bone out and serve the lower portion the same way. The method follows the structure of the fish instead of fighting it, which is why the page insists on laying the steak skin side up with the back to the far side of the dish.
- Split a round fish down the back, not the bellyThese and other thin fish for broiling should be split down the back before cooking. Opening a mackerel or whitefish along the backbone lets it lie flat on the grill and leaves the bone where it can be lifted out at the table. It remains the right way to handle an oily round fish.
- Small fish arranged, not stackedSmelts and perch go round the dish with heads and tails alternating, or in a circle about a silver cup of sauce in the middle, or threaded two or three to a skewer and served a skewerful at a time. It is the only decorative instruction in an otherwise severely practical chapter, and all three arrangements still look well.
- The silver has a practical reasonSilver is specified for the knife and the sauce cup, and that is not only a matter of a laid table: the carbon-steel blades of the period reacted with fish and left a metallic taste. Stainless steel has since solved the problem, which is why the instruction reads as snobbery now when it began as a complaint about flavour.
The chapter turns out to be about restraint. Serve as little of the bone as possible, and be careful not to break the flakes; small slices and rolled fillets are not divided at all; be careful not to crumble the thin fish. For fish, carving is not cutting but separating and lifting, and the instructions are a series of things not to do to the food on the way to a guest’s plate. That is etiquette as much as technique — consideration for the person receiving it, expressed as knife work. And the silver knife and the silver sauce cup in the middle of the platter place all of this at a table with a service of silver on it, which is the household the book is speaking to.