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Fish Stock
Cleanse well from the slime, but do not skin, two pounds of eels; cut them into pieces; also, two pounds of any river fish--carp, trout, etc.--and one pound of skate. Cover these with water, and let them stew gently for four hours, with an onion stuck with cloves, an anchovy, and about an ounce of salt. Strain for use, when the stock may be enriched with butter to suit the required taste.
A Victorian freshwater fish stock, built on eel for body and skate for gelatine. The proportions still work; the cooking time does not.
- Four hours is the one thing to changeFish bones give up most of their flavour and gelatine in 20 to 30 minutes. Simmered much longer, a fish stock tends to turn bitter and gluey and to pick up a stale, boiled-bone smell that butter will not disguise.
- Bones, not filletsFive pounds of whole river fish was cheap when this was written. Use the same weight in heads, frames and trimmings from lean white fish, gills removed and everything rinsed until the water runs clear. Blood left in the head is the usual cause of a grey, murky stock.
- Avoid oily fishTrout and carp are named here as common river fish. Oily bones such as salmon, mackerel and sardine tend to give a stock that goes off quickly and tastes strong; lean frames -- sole, turbot, whiting, snapper, bass, cod -- are the safer choice.
- Eel and skateThe recipe's instruction not to skin the eel matters, since eel skin and bones are rich in the collagen that gives the stock body. Eel can still be found fresh at some specialist fishmongers. Skate does a similar job and is easier to buy, though skate wings held too long smell of ammonia and should be rejected. Neither is strictly essential: extra bones will give some of the same body.
- The onion stuck with clovesThis is an onion piqué: a peeled onion with three or four whole cloves pushed into it, lifted out with the solids at the end. It is a seasoning device, not an ingredient to be chopped in.
- Salt and the anchovyAn ounce of salt is about 28 g, roughly a tablespoon and a half of fine salt or two of coarse, which is heavy for a stock that will later be reduced. Season lightly now and adjust in the finished dish. The anchovy here is a salt-cured one, and a single fish adds savour rather than a pronounced fishy taste.
- Skim and strainBring it barely to a simmer, never a boil, and lift off the grey scum in the first few minutes. Strain through a cloth-lined sieve and do not press the solids, or the clarity is lost.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe says only to cover the fish, which for this quantity is likely to be around three quarts, yielding perhaps two to two and a half quarts strained. Refrigerated it will keep two to three days, and it freezes well; reduce it first if freezer space is short.
The makeup of this preparation says a good deal about the Victorian fish trade: eel, carp, skate and river trout were the cheap end of the slab, and eel in particular was a London staple sold live from tubs. Whatever the reason for it, the reliance on eel skin and skate suits the purpose, since both are unusually rich in the gelatine that gives a fish stock its body -- the same logic French kitchens applied with sole bones in a fumet de poisson. The closing note that it "may be enriched with butter to suit the required taste" points to use as the base for a sauce or a stewed fish rather than as a soup in its own right. The long four-hour stew reflects a period habit of extracting everything possible from bones, a practice sound for beef and wrong for fish, and one that later professional writing corrected.