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Forcemeat for Perch
Take a roach or dace, clean it, and throw it into boiling water slightly salted for seven or eight minutes. Take it out, cut off its head and tail, split it open, and bone it. Pound the flesh with half its weight in freshly-boiled shelled shrimps, a filleted anchovy, one ounce of bread-crumbs soaked in a little milk and squeezed dry, half an ounce of butter, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a shallot, a very little thyme, a salt-spoonful of salt, and a pinch of pepper. Let this be thoroughly mixed, fill the fish with it, sew up the opening, and cook as directed. Probable cost, 1s.
A stuffing for a whole baked or braised perch, built from a second, cheaper fish. The instruction that matters most is the pounding: the mixture has to be worked to a smooth, cohesive paste or it will crumble out of the cavity as the perch cooks.
- Roach and daceBoth are small coarse freshwater fish that a Victorian household could buy or catch but no fishmonger stocks now. Any lean white fish of similar size works — about 6-8 oz of skinned, boned flesh from whiting, pollack or an extra perch fillet. If you use raw fillet rather than the pre-boiled fish, cut the poaching step and pound it raw; the forcemeat cooks through inside the perch.
- Boiling the small fish firstSeven or eight minutes in salted water is for a whole fish of a few ounces; it firms the flesh so it can be boned and pounded without turning to mush. Modern fillets need no more than three or four minutes, and only if you are working from the whole fish.
- A salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon is the small spoon from a Victorian salt cellar, roughly a quarter teaspoon. "Half a shallot" means one small shallot's worth, finely chopped, perhaps two teaspoons.
- The anchovy"A filleted anchovy" means one salt-cured anchovy taken off the bone. A single oil-packed fillet from a tin is the direct equivalent; rinse it if the rest of the seasoning is already salted.
- PoundingA mortar and pestle was the usual tool. A food processor does the job in seconds, but pulse rather than run it — over-processing cooked fish and shrimp gives a rubbery, gluey paste. Chill the mixture before filling the fish so it holds its shape.
- ShrimpsFreshly boiled shelled shrimps means the small brown or pink shrimp sold ready-cooked; half the weight of the pounded fish, so around 3-4 oz. Do not add pre-cooked shrimp to the processor for long or the texture goes to paste.
- Sewing upButcher's twine and a trussing needle, or two or three cocktail sticks laced with string. Whatever holds the belly closed will do; the point is only to keep the stuffing in until the flesh sets.
- "Cook as directed"The recipe gives no cooking directions of its own; the phrase points the reader to the book's perch entries, where a stuffed fish would be baked or braised whole. As modern guidance, a 1.5-2 lb perch takes roughly 30-40 minutes at 350F; the fish is done when the thickest flesh flakes and the stuffing has reached 145F.
- Yield and costEnough forcemeat for one perch of roughly 1.5-2 lb, which would serve two to three. The "probable cost, 1s." is a shilling; the book belongs to the later 1870s.
Forcemeat — from the French farce, by way of an English ear that heard "force" — is one of the load-bearing techniques of Victorian cookery, and Cassell's treats it as a subject in its own right rather than an appendage to a single dish. The logic of this particular version is thrift dressed as refinement: perch was a respectable table fish, while roach and dace were what an angler brought home in quantity and what the river fishermen sold cheaply, being bony and dull on their own. Pounded with shrimp, anchovy and soaked crumbs, that cheap flesh becomes a stuffing fine enough for a better fish, and a little of it goes a long way. Coarse-fish forcemeats of this kind faded from English kitchens along with the trade in freshwater fish generally, a decline usually attributed to rivers growing dirtier and to sea fish arriving inland by rail and ice.