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Gurnet, Boiled
Empty and cleanse the fish thoroughly. Cut off the fins and gills, and boil it gently in salted water. Serve on a napkin, garnish the dish with parsley, and send plain melted butter, or anchovy, parsley, crab, or piquante sauce to table with it. Time, about half an hour. Probable cost, uncertain. Sufficient, a moderate-sized gurnet for three persons.
A plain Victorian fish boil, workable today with one substantial correction to the timing. The gurnard (spelled "gurnet" in older books) is a firm, sweet white fish that still turns up cheaply at good fishmongers.
- The half hour is too longA moderate gurnard of 1–1.5 lb needs roughly 8–12 minutes at a bare simmer, not thirty. Judge by the flesh parting cleanly from the backbone; boiled for half an hour it will be cottony and falling apart.
- "Boil gently" means poachBring the salted water to the boil, slide the fish in, then drop the heat so the surface barely shivers. A rolling boil tears the skin and clouds the liquid.
- Salt the water properlyAbout 1 tablespoon of salt per litre (quart) — seasoned like a light brine, not like pasta water. Fish poached in unsalted water tastes washed out.
- Handle the spinesGurnard have a bony armoured head and sharp dorsal and gill-plate spines. Cut the fins off with kitchen shears rather than a knife, and take the head off if you would rather not deal with it at table.
- "Melted butter" is not melted butterIn English cookery of this period, melted butter means a butter sauce thickened with a little flour and water — closer to a thin white sauce. Anchovy, parsley and crab sauces are all that same base with additions.
- The napkinFish was served on a folded linen napkin laid in the dish to absorb the poaching water. A rack over a warmed platter does the same job without the laundry.
- YieldOne fish of about 1.5 lb serves two to three as a main course; the head and bony frame account for a good deal of the weight.
Gurnard, or gurnet, is generally traced to Old French gornart, related to gronder, to grumble — a reference to the croaking noise the fish makes with its swim bladder when landed. For centuries it was among the cheapest fish on the British quayside, and some of the catch was used as pot or crab bait rather than sent to the table. The treatment given — plain boiling, a napkin, and a choice of made sauces — is the standard Victorian formula applied to almost any white fish, the sauce doing the work the fish itself was not expected to do. Gurnard has since been rehabilitated by chefs looking for sustainable alternatives to cod, and now costs rather more than it did when this was written.