Home › The Principles of Cookery › Fish Ragout in Scallop-Shells
Fish Ragout in Scallop-Shells
Dissolve a piece of butter in a stewpan, and put into it any uncooked fish, well cleared from skin and bone, and cut into small dice, but not mashed; add salt and lemon-juice, and stew very gently till done; then have ready a sauce composed of the following ingredients:--Some good gravy, a glassful of white wine, a little cayenne pepper, grated lemon-peel, ginger, and nutmeg. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, and stir till quite dense; then put in the fish, and stir in the yolks of three eggs and a little anchovy butter. Put this ragout into scallop-shells with a covering of bread-crumbs and Parmesan cheese. Pour a little oiled butter over and bake to a pale brown. Time, ten minutes to bake.
A Victorian gratin with no quantities given for anything but the eggs, so treat it as a method and scale it yourself. The hinge is the egg yolks: they go in off the heat, or the sauce curdles before it ever reaches the shells.
- Working quantitiesFor four shells or ramekins: about 1 lb skinned, boned white fish (cod, haddock, pollock, monkfish) cut in 1/2-inch dice, 2 tbsp butter for the stewing, and roughly a cup of finished sauce. More sauce than that and the ragout runs.
- "Good gravy"In Victorian cookery this usually meant a well-reduced brown meat stock, and meat gravies were routinely used in fish dishes of the period. If you would rather keep the dish fish-forward, a fish fumet or a light veal or chicken stock both work. A commercial beef gravy will bury it.
- A glassful of white wineVictorian wine glasses ran small: reckon 2 to 4 fl oz. Add it to the stock and reduce briefly before thickening, so the sauce is not raw-tasting.
- Egg yolks off the heatThree yolks into a cup of hot thickened sauce will scramble on direct heat. Pull the pan off, let it stop steaming, then beat the yolks in one at a time. They are there to set the ragout in the shell during baking.
- Ginger and nutmegBoth mean dried and grated, and both mean a pinch. The list reads long but the intended effect is a warm background behind the lemon peel and cayenne, not a spiced dish.
- Anchovy butterSoftened butter mashed with anchovy paste or a couple of pounded fillets, about 1 tsp anchovy to 1 tbsp butter. Rare on shelves now, easily made, and the salt in it means you should taste before adding more.
- Oiled butterMelted butter, poured off clear of the milky sediment; clarified butter is the modern equivalent and browns the crumbs more evenly.
- Oven and dishThe book gives no oven temperature, only ten minutes and a pale brown finish, which points to a fairly brisk oven; something in the region of 400 to 425F on an upper shelf is a reasonable modern guess, since the filling is already cooked and only the crust needs colour. Real scallop shells work but sit unsteadily; small gratin dishes or ramekins are simpler. Finish under the broiler for a minute if the top is still pale.
- YieldFour shells as a first course, two as a light main with bread and a green salad. Assemble ahead and refrigerate, but add five minutes to the bake.
Serving a rich, sauced mixture in scallop shells was one of the standard nineteenth-century solutions to the problem of what to do with cooked or trimmed fish, and it appears in English cookery books under what is often given as the French coquille and the plain English "scalloped". The recipe reads less as a fixed dish than as an illustration of method: any white fish, any good gravy, thickened, enriched, crumbed and browned. The long spice list, with ginger and nutmeg standing behind the lemon and cayenne, is a survival of an older English taste for warm spice in fish sauces, still visible in Victorian recipes long after French practice had pared seasoning back. Deep scallop shells were sold and reused as individual baking dishes well into the twentieth century, which is why so many recipes of this era simply assume the cook has a stack of them.