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Fish, Sauce for Boiled
Take some of the water in which the fish has been boiled, and simmer in it for a quarter of an hour an onion, an anchovy, and a table-spoonful of walnut ketchup; add a pint of good veal gravy, strain, and thicken with butter and flour. Two table-spoonfuls of the fish broth will be enough for this quantity. Probable cost, 4d.
A Victorian butter-thickened sauce built on veal stock, with fish liquor and walnut ketchup for depth. Most of the work is in sourcing two ingredients that have largely left the shops.
- The contradictory measurementThe measurement -- The recipe first says to simmer the aromatics in "some of the water in which the fish has been boiled", then quantifies it: two tablespoonfuls of fish broth are enough for this quantity. The order as written is to simmer the onion, anchovy and ketchup in that small amount of fish liquor, then add the pint of veal gravy. Fish cooking water is salty, which is presumably why so little is called for.
- Walnut ketchupA thin, dark, spiced liquid made from green walnuts, salt and vinegar, closer to Worcestershire sauce than to tomato ketchup. It is still made by a few British firms; a tablespoon of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce gives a comparable savoury note, though Worcestershire is sharper and more assertive.
- The anchovyMost likely one whole salt-cured anchovy, which largely breaks down over a quarter-hour simmer, with the residue caught by the straining. Two oil-packed fillets or a teaspoon of anchovy paste is a rough equivalent. It brings a good deal of salt, so taste before seasoning after straining.
- Veal gravyA rich brown veal stock, reduced and gelatinous, of the kind large Victorian kitchens would have had to hand. Modern veal stock is a specialist purchase; a good unsalted chicken stock reduced by a third will give the body required. Avoid a stock cube, as the sauce is already carrying salt from the anchovy and fish liquor.
- Thickening"Thicken with butter and flour" most likely means butter and flour worked to a paste (beurre manié): roughly 1 oz of each mashed together and whisked into the strained, simmering liquid a little at a time. Give it two or three minutes at a bare simmer to cook out the raw flour taste.
- StrainingThe recipe strains after the simmer and before thickening. Press the onion against the sieve to extract the liquid, then discard the solids.
- YieldA pint of gravy plus the fish liquor gives a little over 550 ml before any reduction, enough to dress a large boiled fish for several people. Halve the quantities for a smaller meal.
- The cost"Probable cost, 4d." is fourpence in pre-decimal currency. Fourpence is low for a pint of veal gravy, which suggests the gravy and fish liquor were assumed to be already in the kitchen.
Boiled fish was the default treatment for turbot, cod and salmon in the nineteenth-century English kitchen, and the sauce was where the cooking actually happened. Cassell's places this among the dozens of interchangeable sauces the period offered for the purpose: egg, oyster, shrimp, lobster, anchovy. The pattern here is thoroughly typical: a meat stock as the base, an anchovy for salt and savour, and a bottled ketchup for the dark, fermented note. Walnut ketchup belongs to a family of English store sauces that predates tomato ketchup by roughly a century; households bottled green walnuts in salt and spice in midsummer and drew on the liquor all year. Using veal gravy under a fish sauce looks strange now, but it is arguable that Victorian cookery treated brown stock as a neutral foundation rather than a flavour in its own right, and the small quantity of fish liquor was thought sufficient to point the sauce back towards the plate it was meant to dress.