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Fish, to Caveach
Salmon or cod may be done in this way. If cod, bone and slice the tail part; sprinkle with salt; dry well, and fry a nice brown. Make a pickle of vinegar, peppercorns, mace, a few cloves, and bay-leaves; boil till the flavour is extracted, then put by to cool. Cut a couple of small onions into slices, lay them over and between the fish; add a cupful of salad-oil to the vinegar, and pour over the fish, which should be covered. Serve in the middle of a dish, with a salad round it. Time to fry cod, ten to twelve minutes. Salmon will take a few minutes longer.
Caveach is fried fish steeped in a spiced vinegar and oil — an escabeche by another name. It is a cold dish, and everything depends on the fish being properly dry and properly browned before the pickle touches it.
- Dry the fish, then fry hardSurface moisture is what turns caveach flabby. Pat the slices completely dry after salting and fry in oil hot enough to set a crust; a pale, soft fry will slacken quickly once the vinegar is on it.
- Cut and quantitiesThe original gives no weights. Reckon on about 1½ lb of cod tail or salmon, cut into steaks or thick slices roughly an inch thick, which serves four as a first course with the salad.
- The pickleAbout 2 cups vinegar to a dozen peppercorns, a blade of mace, 4-6 cloves and 2-3 bay leaves. "Boil till the flavour is extracted" is probably best taken as a simmer of eight to ten minutes rather than a long reduction.
- Cool before pouringThe instruction to put the pickle by to cool is not incidental. Hot vinegar poured over fried fish steams the crust off it. Both fish and pickle should be at room temperature or below when they meet.
- A cupful of salad-oil"Salad-oil" in Victorian usage generally meant olive oil. The size of the cup is not fixed -- somewhere around half a pint is a fair reading -- and the oil floats and seals the surface; do not skimp on it or the fish will not be covered.
- Covered means submerged"Which should be covered" refers to the liquid, not a lid. Use a narrow non-reactive dish — glass or glazed earthenware, never bare aluminium or unlined copper — so the vinegar and oil come over the top of the fish.
- Standing timeThe book gives frying times but no steeping time. Caveach wants at least 12 hours in the cold to take the flavour, is at its best after a day or two, and should be eaten within four or five days refrigerated.
- Frying timesTen to twelve minutes suits inch-thick cod slices in a shallow pan turned once; thinner cuts need considerably less. The recipe simply allows salmon a few minutes more.
"Caveach" is the English mangling of the Spanish escabeche, itself generally traced back to Arabic sikbāj, a medieval vinegar stew whose name travelled across the Mediterranean ahead of the dish. English cookery books have carried caveached mackerel and sole since the eighteenth century, and the technique had settled into exactly this shape: fry, spice a vinegar, cool it, pour it over. The point was originally preservation — acid and a seal of oil kept fried fish edible for days in a kitchen with no ice — but in a household with a cold larder it served equally as a summer dish, served cold in the middle of a salad as the book directs.