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Fish Maigre, to Dress
Take boiling water, but only just enough to cover the fish, and let it simmer steadily till the fish is done, adding a small tea-spoonful of peppercorns, six or eight allspice, and two middle-sized onions, each stuck with two cloves. With the liquor, when strained, put as much flour and butter as will make it of the consistency of milk; flavour with wine, and any sauce--mushroom or anchovy-and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne. To each pint of sauce put a glass of wine, a small spoonful of ketchup, a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, and a few grains of cayenne. This sauce, after it has simmered a few minutes, should be strained over the fish, which must be served on a deep dish. Garnish with sippets of bread, fried. Time, from ten to twenty minutes to simmer, according to the size of the fish.
A poached fish with a velouté made from its own cooking liquor — a fast-day dish that leans on wine and bottled sauces for depth instead of meat stock. The instructions assume a whole fish and a cook who can judge a roux by eye.
- What "maigre" means hereWhat "maigre" may mean here -- There is a fish called the maigre, and the title may refer to it; but "maigre" is also French for lean, and in these books it can mark a fasting-day treatment with no meat broth. On either reading the poaching liquor and butter are the only foundation, so the sauce must carry the dish.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThe hinge of the recipe. Water "just enough to cover" at a steady simmer, not a boil — a rolling boil splits the skin and shreds the flakes before the interior is set. The recipe allows ten to twenty minutes according to the size of the fish; the flesh should part from the bone cleanly.
- Ketchup is not tomatoIn a Victorian British kitchen ketchup meant mushroom or walnut ketchup — a thin, dark, salty condiment closer to Worcestershire than to anything on a modern burger. Use mushroom ketchup if you can find it, or a scant teaspoon of Worcestershire or good soy in its place.
- "A glass of wine"Genuinely imprecise in these books; a wine glass of the period ran roughly 2 to 4 fl oz. Start at 2 fl oz per pint of sauce and taste, since the wine, ketchup and anchovy are all doing the same salty-savoury job and will crowd each other.
- Flour and butter to the consistency of milkAbout 1 oz each of butter and flour per pint of strained liquor gives a sauce that coats a spoon thinly, which is what "the consistency of milk" describes. Cook the roux a minute before adding the hot liquor so it does not taste raw.
- Anchovy sauceA bottled thin anchovy essence, once standard in British larders. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or two rinsed fillets mashed in, does the same work — but salt the sauce only at the end, since anchovy and ketchup both bring plenty.
- Strain twiceThe peppercorns, allspice and clove-stuck onions go into the poaching water, so the liquor must be strained before it becomes sauce, and the recipe strains again over the fish. Skip the second pass and you serve a smooth-looking sauce with grit in it.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter until crisp, set round the rim of the deep dish at the last moment. They soften within minutes of meeting the sauce, so fry them while the fish rests.
- YieldAs written the sauce quantities are given per pint. The recipe itself states no weight of fish and no number of servings, so a pint of sauce to one whole fish is a working scale only.
Maigre is French for lean, and in nineteenth-century English cookery books a dish "au maigre" or "maigre" was often one fit for a fast day — Lent, Fridays, Ember days — when meat and meat stock were set aside but fish, butter and eggs were not; the word also names a fish, so the title here is not certain evidence of fast-day intent. Cassell's, an omnibus compiled for middle-class British households in the 1870s and after, inherited a whole vocabulary of these fast-day dishes from French practice. What dates the recipe most sharply is the sauce: mushroom ketchup, anchovy essence and a glass of wine were the standing flavour reserves of the Victorian store cupboard, kept bottled on a shelf and reached for exactly as a modern cook reaches for stock cubes and fish sauce. The instruction to garnish with fried sippets is older still, a habit of edging a deep dish of anything saucy with crisp bread that runs back through eighteenth-century English cookery.