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Fish Gravy
Put into a saucepan a piece of butter, a few slices of onion, and a carrot cut in pieces; then add the remains and bones of any fish. Let the vegetables simmer without burning, moisten with a little white stock, and when it boils thicken it with a little arrowroot or white roux (see ROUX, WHITE) to the desired consistency. Probable cost, 8d.
A quick fish sauce built from carcasses and trimmings rather than a long-simmered fumet. It comes together in under half an hour and is best made while the fish it accompanies is cooking.
- The hinge: keep it short and keep it lowFish bones are generally reckoned to give up their flavour within about twenty minutes, and long cooking is widely said to turn the liquid bitter and gluey. Simmer gently, never at a rolling boil, and skim the grey scum as it rises or the finished gravy will be cloudy and muddy-tasting.
- Which bonesFrames, heads (gills removed) and skin from white fish — sole, plaice, whiting, cod, turbot — are what this wants. Oily fish such as mackerel, herring or salmon give a heavier, strongly flavoured sauce and are better avoided.
- "Let the vegetables simmer without burning"This is sweating in butter over low heat: the onion should go translucent with no colour at all. Any browning shows through as a dull tan in what is meant to be a pale sauce.
- White stockIn the original this means a pale veal or chicken stock. A light chicken stock works, or the fish stock you can make from a second batch of bones; avoid dark or heavily seasoned commercial stocks. The recipe says only to 'moisten with a little', so add sparingly rather than covering the bones.
- White rouxEqual weights butter and plain flour cooked together two or three minutes without colouring — about 15 g of each per 250 ml of liquid for a pouring sauce. Arrowroot, the alternative given, is slaked in cold water and stirred in off the boil; it sets glossy but thins again if held hot for long, so use it only if serving at once.
- Strain, then seasonThe recipe never says so, but the bones and vegetables must be strained out through a fine sieve. Salt only at that point, and finish with lemon juice or a little cream if you wish; the recipe as written specifies no seasoning at all.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no quantities, so make only as much as the meal needs. Fish-based sauces spoil quickly; refrigerate within the hour and use within a day.
- "Probable cost, 8d."Eightpence in pre-decimal money. The bones are 'the remains... of any fish', i.e. assumed to be scraps left from another dish.
The method resembles the classic French fumet reduced to household scale — aromatics sweated in butter, bones moistened rather than drowned, the liquid bound with roux in a manner often traced to Carême and later Escoffier's white fish velouté. The choice offered between roux and arrowroot is characteristic of English cookery books of the 1870s onward, where arrowroot was promoted as lighter and more digestible, particularly for invalid cookery. The costing in pence, given for almost every entry in the Dictionary, presumably served a household budgeting its kitchen expenditure.