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Dory, Filleted
Fillet a dory, cut it into convenient pieces for serving, and dry thoroughly. Put a tea-spoonful of minced parsley into a pan with a gill of olive oil, and fry for five minutes; add two table-spoonfuls of flour, a pint of good fish stock, and a little pepper and salt; when smooth put in the fillets, simmer for eight to ten minutes, then arrange neatly on a dish, garnished with cut lemons. Probable cost, 2s.
A simple poached fillet in an oil-and-flour sauce, of the kind Cassell's prints by the hundred with no yield, no heat setting and no explanation. The points below fill in what the original assumes you already know.
- The fishJohn Dory (Zeus faber) is a thin, oval fish with a huge head; a whole one yields perhaps a third of its weight in fillet, so allow a 2-3 lb fish for four people. Any firm white fillet — turbot, brill, haddock, hake — behaves the same way in this sauce.
- A gill and a pintThis is an English book, so a gill is 5 fl oz (about 150 ml) and a pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml). That is a great deal of olive oil for the quantity of flour; using less of it will bring the roux nearer normal consistency, and the sauce will still be rich.
- Frying the parsleyFive minutes in hot oil will scorch minced parsley to black specks. Warm it gently in the oil over low heat to perfume the fat, then add the flour — the point of the step is flavour, not colour.
- The hinge: cook the flour, then add stock off the boilLet the flour and oil bubble a minute or two before the stock goes in, and add the stock gradually while whisking. "When smooth" is the whole instruction and the whole difficulty; an oil-based roux slackens faster than a butter one and will go lumpy if flooded.
- Fish stock"Good fish stock" means one made from fish trimmings; the dory's own head and bones will serve, and are said to make a good gelatinous stock. Twenty minutes is enough — fish bones are generally held to turn bitter with long boiling.
- Simmering timeEight to ten minutes suits thick fillets from a large fish. Thin dory fillets are done in four or five; take them out when the flesh has just turned opaque, as they will carry on cooking in the hot sauce on the dish.
- ServingSpoon the sauce over rather than serving the fillets sitting in it, and check the seasoning at the end — the flour and oil mute salt considerably. The cut lemons are structural, not decorative; the sauce needs the acid.
John Dory was a prestige fish in Victorian Britain, ranked with turbot and sole by cooks who valued its firm, sweet flesh and forgave its grotesque appearance and enormous waste. The 2s. quoted as "probable cost" places it firmly among the better fish of the market at a time when herring went for pennies. The "John" element of the name is unexplained, and the various stories told about it — the French jaune dorée, golden yellow, or a folk-song character called John Dory — are best treated as folk etymology; the dark thumbprint spot on each flank is traditionally said to be where St Peter took the tribute coin from the fish's mouth, which is why the French and Italians call it Saint-Pierre and San Pietro. The technique here is worth noting: parsley steeped in oil, a flour thickening, fish stock rather than water, with olive oil rather than butter carrying the sauce.