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FISH (au Gratin)
Remove all bones and skin from six ounces of cold fish, and divide it into small pieces. Make a quarter of a pint of white sauce, stir the fish into the hot sauce, and let it heat gently for ten minutes, then turn it into a fireproof dish which has been well buttered. Mix one ounce of grated cheese with one ounce of fresh bread-crumbs, sprinkle them over the fish, dot half an ounce of butter in small pieces on top, season with pepper and salt, and bake in a fireproof dish in a gentle oven until the top is lightly browned. Serve in the dish it is cooked in, placed on a folded napkin.
A small dish built to use up yesterday's boiled fish, and one of the most reliable ways to do it. The proportions are for two as a light course.
- QuantitiesSix ounces of cooked fish is about 170 g, roughly what you get from a single generous fillet. A quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, or a scant 2/3 US cup.
- Gentle ovenRoughly 300-325F (150-165C). The filling is already cooked; the oven is only there to brown the crumbs and cheese, and the recipe gives no time, only 'until the top is lightly browned'.
- The hingeThe sauce wants to be thick enough to coat the fish and no thinner. A quarter pint to six ounces of fish gives a fairly close-bound mixture, and a loose sauce is liable to separate into a watery layer under the crust.
- Handle the fish lightlyThe recipe has the flakes stirred into the hot sauce and heated gently for ten minutes. Keep the heat low and the stirring slight; hard stirring over a brisk flame shreds cooked fish into paste.
- Which fishCold cod, haddock, hake, salmon or smoked haddock all work. The recipe opens by directing you to remove all bones and skin, so pick the flakes over carefully.
- The cheeseAn ounce is about 30 g. A dry hard cheese browns best, so Parmesan or a well-aged Cheddar; young supermarket Cheddar gives up its fat and leaves the crumbs greasy.
- Fresh crumbs, not driedThe recipe specifies fresh bread-crumbs, which brown to a soft crust. Dried crumbs or panko colour faster and can darken before you want them to.
- Seasoning orderSeason the sauce as well, not just the top. White sauce made without salt will taste flat under a salty crumb layer.
- ServingThe folded napkin under the dish is a Victorian dining-room convention that also kept a hot fireproof dish off the table linen. A trivet does the same work.
Au gratin is generally traced to the crust: the French gratter, to scrape, is usually said to refer to the browned surface that formed on the dish and had to be scraped off. In late Victorian and Edwardian English cookery the phrase came to mean almost exactly what is described here, cooked food bound in a sauce, covered with crumbs and cheese and browned in the oven, and it was a standard tool of the frugal kitchen. Fish was bought and cooked in quantity, often boiled plain, and the remains were expected to reappear at breakfast or luncheon rather than be thrown out. The instruction to serve in the cooking dish may be a small sign of change in the period: fireproof earthenware and porcelain suitable for the table are often said to have been becoming more widely available, though whether that explains this particular instruction is uncertain.