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Carp, Boiled
Wash, scale, and draw a carp, preserving the liver and roe. Put it into boiling salt and water, allowing a table-spoonful of salt to two quarts of water, and let it boil gently till it is ready. Make a sauce with half a pint of the liquor in which the fish was boiled, a cupful of port, two shallots finely minced, two boned anchovies, a table-spoonful of soy, salt and cayenne. Let these boil gently till the anchovies are dissolved, then thicken the sauce with flour and butter, and add the liver finely minced. Garnish with the roe fried, and slices of lemon. Time to boil, form twenty to thirty minutes. Sufficient for two persons.
A whole poached carp with a dark, salty, port-and-anchovy sauce built from its own cooking liquor. Most of the work is in the sauce; the fish only needs a gentle bath.
- Don't boil itDespite the title, "let it boil gently" means a bare simmer with the surface barely trembling. A rolling boil breaks the skin and shreds the flesh; hold the water around 180F and pull the fish when the flesh at the thickest point reaches 145F.
- Timing and sizeTwenty to thirty minutes would suit a whole fish of a couple of pounds, which is about what "sufficient for two persons" suggests; the recipe gives no weight. As a rough modern guide, reckon 8-10 minutes per pound for a whole carp; a fillet needs far less than the stated time.
- "Draw"Gut the fish, keeping the liver and roe. Scale before gutting, working from tail to head, and scald with boiling water first if the scales resist. Carp scales are large and stubborn and best removed outdoors or in a sink of water.
- SoyA tablespoon of soy sauce. In Victorian kitchens "soy" was a bottled imported sauce used much as we use it now, dark and salty; a Chinese or Japanese dark soy is the closest match.
- Boned anchoviesSalt-packed anchovies with the bones removed, rinsed. Note that two whole anchovies means four fillets, not two. They will melt into the liquor in a few minutes of simmering. Anchovies in oil work; hold back on the added salt until the sauce is finished, as the liquor is already salted.
- Thicken with flour and butterThis is beurre manie: knead equal parts soft butter and flour, about a tablespoon of each, and whisk it into the simmering sauce in small pieces. Half a pint of liquor (10 fl oz in British measure) plus a cup of port reduces to a sauce for two.
- The liver and roeMince the raw liver and stir it into the finished sauce off the direct heat, then let it cook through gently. The roe is fried separately in butter as a garnish; keep it in its membrane so it holds together.
- Flavour of the fishFarmed or river carp can taste muddy, largely from the skin and the dark lateral flesh. Soaking the cleaned fish in salted or acidulated water for an hour helps; a sauce as assertive as this one would in any case cover a good deal.
Carp was a managed crop rather than a wild catch for much of European history: monastic and manorial stew ponds kept it alive and to hand through Lent and winter, and it remained a standard table fish in Britain well into the nineteenth century before falling almost entirely out of English cookery. The sauce is characteristic of the period -- port, shallots, anchovy and bottled soy make the dark, salty, faintly sweet gravy often poured over freshwater fish. Using the fish's own liver to enrich and thicken the sauce, and its fried roe as garnish, reflects a kitchen in which nothing edible left the fish unused.