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CARP (en Matelote)
Wash and prepare a carp, and, if obtainable, an eel, and cut them into pieces about an inch and a half long. Put three ounces of butter into a saucepan, let it melt, then fry in it one dozen small onions. Dredge in a table-spoonful of flour, and stir in smoothly and very gradually a cupful of red wine and the same of broth. Add salt and cayenne, two bay-leaves, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a clove of garlic. Let all simmer gently for a few minutes, then put in the pieces of eel, and, ten minutes afterwards, the carp, with the roe. Simmer for a quarter of an hour more. Remove the herbs and the garlic, and pour the sauce hot over the fish. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost of the eel, 6d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A French freshwater fish stew of the plainest kind: aromatics in butter, wine and broth thickened with a little flour, and two fish added in order of how long they take. The order is the whole point.
- Add the fish in stagesEel is dense and needs the head start the recipe gives it; carp is flakier and will fall apart if it goes in with the eel. Keep the liquid at a bare shiver rather than a boil throughout, or both fish will shred.
- Cut the timingsTen minutes for the eel plus a further fifteen for the carp is generous for inch-and-a-half pieces. Eight to ten minutes for eel and six to eight for carp is closer to the mark; the fish is done when it just parts from the bone.
- A cupfulTake it as 8 fl oz (240 ml) each of red wine and broth, giving about 16 fl oz of liquid before it reduces, which is right for a dish served in its own liquid for four or five.
- Small onionsThese are button onions, peeled and left whole — about 250 g for a dozen of decent size; pearl onions are smaller and you would want more of them. Frozen peeled ones are an acceptable shortcut; brown them properly in the butter before the flour goes in.
- Bunch of savoury herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, and the two bay leaves already called for, tied so you can lift them out. Tie the garlic clove in with them, since the recipe has you remove it whole.
- Buying the fishAsk for the eel skinned and cut, and for the carp scaled and gutted; both are awkward jobs. Farmed carp is much milder than wild, but if the fish smells of pond, a soak in salted water for an hour helps.
- The roeCarp roe is a hard roe and firms up quickly. Add it with the carp, not before, and expect it to be cooked through in a few minutes.
- ServingMatelote is traditionally served with fried bread croutons rubbed with garlic, which take up the sauce. Boiled potatoes do the same job. Sufficient for four as a main course rather than five.
A matelote is a boatman's stew — from matelot, sailor — and in French cookery the word means specifically a freshwater fish braised in wine with onions, herbs and a butter-and-flour liaison, the whole thing a river-country cousin of coq au vin. Eel and carp are its classic pairing, partly because both were kept alive in stew ponds and tanks and could be had fresh inland long before refrigerated transport, and partly because eel's fattiness balances carp's soft, sometimes muddy flesh. Cassell's gives the price of eel per pound but not of the carp, and one might guess at the reason: perhaps that by the late nineteenth century in Britain carp was more often a pond fish taken by the household or bought locally than a market staple, though this is speculation. Eel, at any rate, was a cheap and widely traded urban food, sold jellied and stewed in London by the barrow. The recipe's cautious "if obtainable" about the eel marks the point at which a French country dish was being copied into an English kitchen that could not always assemble the parts.