Home › The Principles of Cookery › Fish, Grilled
Fish, Grilled
Small thin fish, or large fish divided into slices or fillets, are excellent when grilled. This method of cooking is particularly suitable for fish to be served at breakfast. Slices of salmon, cod, or sturgeon, trout, red mullet, herrings fresh and dried, haddock, whiting, filleted sole or mackerel, the small soles called "slips," and the small plaice called "dabs" may all be grilled, and thus cooked will be tasty and well flavoured. The fish should first be thoroughly dried, then rubbed all over with oil, and seasoned with pepper and salt. Occasionally a little chopped parsley is added to the seasoning. The oil will keep the fish from becoming dry whilst it is being cooked. Be careful to have a clear bright fire for grilling fish. Make the gridiron hot on both sides, and rub it well with mutton fat, to keep the fish from sticking. Place it upon the bars, keep moving it about, and turn it occasionally, that it may be equally cooked on both sides. When it is done through and is lightly browned all over it is ready to serve. Sometimes fish that is to be grilled is floured after it is oiled, and this helps to give it a good colour. When it is wished that the fish should be very delicately prepared it is wrapped in well oiled paper, but this method requires care or the paper may burn or become dirty and unsightly. Broiled fish may either be served without sauce, or piquant sauce may be sent to table with it.
This is a method rather than a fixed recipe, written for a gridiron over a coal fire. The technique transfers cleanly to a charcoal grill, a ridged cast-iron pan or an overhead broiler, provided the heat is high and the fish is dry before it goes on.
- "A clear bright fire"This means coals burned down past the flame and smoke stage, glowing and even — roughly what a modern cook would call high direct heat. Flames licking the fish will blacken the oil and taint it.
- The gridiron, preheatedHeating the bars on both sides and greasing them is the whole trick against sticking, and it still is. On cast iron or a grill grate, get the metal properly hot before the fish touches it; oil the grate as well as the fish.
- Mutton fatRendered sheep fat is what the recipe calls for; it sets hard and would have been to hand in any mutton-eating kitchen. Any neutral high-smoke-point oil does the same job without the flavour.
- Timing, which the original omitsFillets and thin fish need roughly 3-4 minutes a side; a 1-inch salmon or cod steak, 4-5 minutes a side. Official guidance is 145F internal for fish; many cooks take salmon and trout off nearer 125-130F, which is a matter of preference rather than safety. The instruction to keep moving it about probably reflects the uneven heat of an open fire.
- SturgeonWild sturgeon is now protected across most of its range and is not a shop fish. Farmed sturgeon exists but is expensive and mostly sold as a by-product of caviar production; swordfish or a thick salmon steak behaves similarly on the bars.
- "Slips" and "dabs"Slips are undersized soles; the book treats "dabs" as small plaice, though the dab is properly a separate flatfish species. Either way, small flatfish cooked whole. Any whole flatfish under about 12 oz works the same way.
- Dried herringsThe dried and salted herrings of the period were saltier than most cured herring sold now. Modern kippers and bloaters are lightly cured and need no soaking, and they should be seasoned with restraint or not at all.
- The flour dustingFlouring over the oil gives browning through starch, which is genuinely effective on lean white fish that colours poorly. Use it sparingly; a heavy coat sticks to the bars.
- Oiled paperThis is cooking en papillote. Baking parchment does the job without scorching, though on a live fire it still chars at the edges; foil is the practical substitute over coals.
- "Piquant sauce"In period cookery this generally means a sharp brown sauce built on vinegar and shallots with capers or gherkins. Any acidic accompaniment — anchovy butter, a mustard sauce, plain lemon — serves the same purpose against the oil.
Grilling fish was a familiar part of the breakfast table in late Victorian and Edwardian households; it was fast, needed no oven, and could be done on the same open range fire already lit for the morning, though the connection is inference rather than documented fact. The gridiron — a flat iron rack with parallel bars and a long handle — was standard kitchen equipment, and the instruction to heat it on both sides and grease it with mutton fat is the sort of hard-won practical detail that separates working cookbooks from decorative ones. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, the later revised edition of the Dictionary of Cookery that had appeared in the mid-to-late 1870s, was arranged alphabetically as a reference work rather than as a sequence of menus, so entries like this one set out a general principle to be applied across the dozen or so species listed. The range of fish named reflects what a British fishmonger actually had: cheap herrings and whiting alongside red mullet and salmon, with the undersized soles and plaice sold under their trade names of slips and dabs.