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Carp Pie
Line the edges of a pie-dish with a good light crust. Stuff a medium-sized carp with oyster forcemeat, sew it up to prevent this escaping, and lay it in the middle of the dish. Put round it pieces of eel about an inch and a half in length, which have been already partly cooked. Take three-quarters of a pint of the liquor in which the eel was stewed, put with it a cupful of port, a little salt and cayenne, an onion stuck with four cloves, and a blade of mace. Let these simmer gently until they are reduced to half a pint of gravy, which may be thickened with a little flour and butter. Pour this over the fish, cover with crust, and bake in a moderate oven for one hour. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian raised fish pie: a whole stuffed carp under pastry, with eel and a port gravy. Nothing about it is difficult, but almost every component needs translating for a modern fishmonger and a modern oven.
- The hinge: bone the carp firstThe recipe assumes a diner willing to pick a whole fish apart under a pastry lid. Have the fishmonger scale, gut and butterfly the carp, leaving it whole in shape but boned, before you stuff and sew it. Carp is riddled with fine intermuscular Y-bones that will not soften in an hour.
- A moderate ovenRead as about 350F/175C. An hour should be about right for a medium carp (the recipe gives no weight; assume roughly 2-3 lb dressed), but check the thickest point behind the head with a probe for 145F/63C rather than trusting the clock, since the pastry hides everything.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz, reduced to 10 fl oz of finished gravy. A "cupful" here is loose usage but read it as about 8 fl oz of port.
- EelEuropean eel is now a threatened species subject to trade restriction, and wild-caught eel is scarce and expensive. Farmed eel, or a firm oily fish cut into inch-and-a-half pieces, keeps the intent. The recipe also depends on the eel stewing liquor, so you need to poach the pieces in lightly salted water or fish stock first and save it.
- Oyster forcemeatTypically breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped oysters and their liquor, parsley, lemon zest, mace and egg to bind. Chop the oysters coarsely; whole ones will overcook to rubber in an hour under a crust. Six to eight oysters is enough for a medium fish.
- Lining the edges onlyThis is a pie-dish pie, not a lined tart. Pastry goes on the rim of the dish to give the lid something to seal to, and the base of the dish stays bare so the gravy does not soak through. Cut a vent in the lid.
- The gravySimmer the stock, port, onion, cloves and mace uncovered until reduced by a third, then strain out the aromatics before thickening with a beurre manie. Pour it in warm, not boiling, and keep the level below the pastry rim.
- ServingFour to five as written, as a main course. Carp can taste muddy depending on the water it was raised in; a soak in salted water with a squeeze of lemon for an hour before stuffing helps.
Carp was a managed crop long before it was a sport fish. Monastic and manorial stew ponds kept them alive and on hand through Lent and winter, and by the nineteenth century carp was still common enough in British fishmongers to warrant its own run of entries in a general dictionary of cookery. The pairing with eel and oysters here is thoroughly of its period: oysters were often used in quantity as stuffing rather than treated as a luxury, though their price in Britain rose sharply over the century, and port in a savoury fish gravy reflects the Victorian taste for dark, fortified, heavily spiced sauces with freshwater fish, which were considered muddy and in need of assertive company. The dish is nonetheless a made dish in the full sense: forcemeat, garnish, reduced gravy and pastry, each prepared separately and brought together in one dish.