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Haddock, Boiled
Wash the fish thoroughly, scrape off the scales, empty it, wipe the inside, and fasten the tail in the mouth with a skewer. Put two ounces of salt into half a gallon of water, and, when it is dissolved, put in the fish. Bring the water quickly to a boil, remove the scum carefully, then simmer gently until the eyes of the fish start and the flesh leaves the bone easily. Take it up as soon as it is sufficiently cooked, or it will be hard and tasteless. Serve it on a napkin, garnish with parsley, and send melted butter and anchovy sauce to table in a tureen. Time, according to the size--a good-sized haddock will be boiled sufficiently in about half an hour. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost of haddock, from 9d. upwards.
A plain poached whole fish, cooked in salted water rather than a court-bouillon. The only real trap is the stated time.
- Cut the time hardHalf an hour will destroy a haddock. A whole fish of 2-3 lb is done in 15-20 minutes at a bare simmer; reckon roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder. The book's own warning — "or it will be hard and tasteless" — is the instruction that matters, and its clock contradicts it.
- The brineTwo ounces of salt to half a gallon of water is about 3 tablespoons of table salt (rather more if flaked or kosher) to 2 quarts — a brine of roughly 2.5 to 3 per cent. It seasons the flesh and firms it; do not skip it and do not double it.
- Doneness signs"The eyes start" means the eyes turn opaque white and bulge; it is the traditional marker on a whole round fish, though a rough one, since the eyes set before the flesh is done. Confirm with a thin knife at the backbone: the flesh should part cleanly and read about 130-135F.
- Bring to a boil, then stopThe quick boil is for skimming the scum only. Drop the heat at once — a rolling boil splits the skin and shreds the flakes. A wide pan or a fish kettle with a rack makes lifting the fish out possible without breaking it.
- Tail in the mouthSkewering the tail through the jaw curls the fish into a ring so it fits the pan and holds its shape. Largely a matter of Victorian presentation; laying it straight loses little but the look.
- "Melted butter"In English cookery of this period this is not simply warmed butter but a thin white sauce — butter and flour cooked together, thinned with water or milk. Anchovy sauce is the same base with anchovy essence or paste stirred in; a couple of mashed anchovy fillets does the job.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin on the platter absorbed the water draining off a poached fish. A wire rack and a moment's draining, then a warmed plate, achieves the same end.
- Yield and costFour to five servings suggests a fish of perhaps 3 lb whole, though the recipe only says "a good-sized haddock." The 9d. price is pre-decimal British currency and is useful now only as a marker of how cheap haddock then was.
Haddock was one of the great cheap fishes of the British nineteenth century, landed in quantity from the North Sea and carried inland by rail, which is why the book can quote it at ninepence and treat boiling it as a routine domestic act rather than an occasion. Plain boiling in salted water was a standard English treatment for white fish — the flavour was expected to come from the sauce sent to table in a tureen, and anchovy sauce with white fish is a pairing that runs through Victorian and Edwardian cookery books. The instruction to skewer the tail into the mouth belongs to the same period's fondness for presenting a fish as an unbroken shape on a napkin-lined dish; smoked haddock, now the more familiar form, was a separate trade associated largely with Scottish curing towns.