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Carp, Stewed
Cleanse a carp thoroughly, and cut it into slices, then put it into a stewpan, with a quarter of a pound of bacon and a quarter of a pound of veal cut into slices, four small onions stuck with four cloves, two carrots, a sprig of thyme, a bunch of parsley, half a dozen chives, and, if liked, half a clove of garlic. The vegetables must be sliced and the herbs chopped. Pour a glassful of white wine over the carp, and let it simmer for two or three minutes, then add equal parts of white wine and stock, sufficient to cover the fish and vegetables. Let them simmer gently for an hour, thicken the sauce with a little flour and butter, add pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and boil it, stirring continually, until it is a proper consistence. Time to prepare, one hour and a half. Sufficient for one or two persons.
A nineteenth-century matelote in the French manner: the bacon, veal and vegetables are there to build a broth around the fish rather than to be served with it. A few points need translating.
- The hinge: an hour is for the broth, not the fishThick carp steaks are done in 12-20 minutes of gentle simmering; an hour reduces them to shreds. Build the wine-and-stock broth with the bacon, veal, vegetables and herbs first, simmer that for the hour, then slide the fish in for the last quarter of an hour.
- A glassful of wineThe recipe does not define the measure. Victorian usage generally reckons a wineglassful at around 2 fl oz, though the figure varies from book to book. The later "equal parts of white wine and stock" will need considerably more, perhaps 2-3 cups in total depending on the pan.
- Cleansing a carpFarmed and wild carp both carry a dark bloodline along the backbone and a black inner membrane; both are muddy-tasting and worth scraping away. The scales are large and tightly set, so scale before cutting into slices. Take care not to nick the gall bladder when gutting, as it will make the whole fish bitter.
- Buying the fishLive or very fresh carp is sold at Chinese, Polish and other Eastern European markets, often to order. A 2-3 lb fish is the right size here; mirror carp and grass carp both work, and a firm freshwater substitute such as tilapia or catfish will take the same treatment.
- Chives, in quantity"Half a dozen chives" means six individual stalks, not six bunches — a small pinch, chopped, added with the parsley and thyme.
- Onions stuck with clovesFour cloves total, one pressed into each small onion, so they can be fished out at the end. Note that the recipe then says to slice the vegetables; slice the carrots and leave the clove-studded onions whole so you do not lose the cloves in the broth.
- ThickeningA beurre manie he flour kneaded together, about 1 tablespoon of each, whisked into the strained broth off the boil, then returned to a simmer. Doing it this way avoids the lumps that come of dumping dry flour into hot liquid, and the simmer cooks the flour out.
- Yield"Sufficient for one or two persons" assumes a small fish and a table with several other dishes on it. A 3 lb carp treated this way will serve four with bread and potatoes.
Carp is the great pond fish of European cookery: introduced across the continent in the Middle Ages, farmed in monastic stew ponds because it grows fast in still water and survives transport alive, and long associated with Lent and with Christmas Eve in Poland, Bohemia and southern Germany. The method here is essentially a matelote, the French freshwater-fish stew in which the cooking liquid is a wine broth enriched with meat — the bacon and veal are flavouring agents. Cassell's, compiled for British households in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, drew heavily on French professional practice of this kind, which is why a recipe for a homely pond fish arrives with cloves, nutmeg, garlic and two kinds of meat. Carp had already begun its long decline in British esteem by the time this book appeared; it survives now mainly as coarse-fishing quarry in Britain and as an aggressively successful invasive species in North American rivers.