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Haddock Pudding
Bone and skin two raw fresh haddocks, pound them in a mortar, and rub them through a sieve; then put the fish again into the mortar with two eggs, a little parsley, an onion cut small, a seasoning of white pepper and salt, a slice of bread in crumbs, and a quarter of a pound of veal suet or marrow. Pound all well together, put it into a shape, tie it up in a cloth, and boil it an hour.
A Victorian boiled fish forcemeat, closer to a quenelle mixture than to anything called pudding today. The work is all in the pounding, which a food processor does in under a minute.
- Two haddocksThe recipe gives no weights; boned and skinned, two fish of a size commonly sold would give something in the region of 1.5-2 lb of flesh. Skinless fillets are the practical substitute, and the mixture wants them cold from the fridge.
- Mortar and sievePulse the fish in a food processor with the eggs until smooth, then push through a fine sieve or drum sieve if you want the old texture. Skipping the sieve leaves a coarser, more rustic pudding, which is not a fault.
- Veal suet or marrowA quarter pound (4 oz, about 115 g) of hard fat is what keeps the pudding from turning dry and rubbery. Veal suet is effectively unavailable; beef suet, shredded or grated frozen, is the closest, and marrow from a couple of large beef bones works as the recipe intends.
- A slice of bread in crumbsThe recipe gives no size; 1 to 1.5 oz of fresh white breadcrumbs, around half a cup loosely packed, is a reasonable reading. Dried crumbs from a canister absorb differently and will stiffen the mixture.
- The shape and the clothButter a pudding basin or plain mould well (allow at least 2 pints for the full quantity), fill it no more than three-quarters full, cover with buttered greaseproof and foil, and tie down. The cloth of the original is optional insurance; the point is to keep water out.
- Boiling an hourSet the mould on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up, and keep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, which curdles egg-bound fish mixtures. An hour is right for a full-sized basin; check the centre reads 160F.
- Turning out and servingRest five minutes before unmoulding or it will slump. The recipe names no sauce; anchovy, egg, or shrimp sauce would all suit. It serves four to six as a main course, more as part of a larger meal.
Pounded fish puddings and "shapes" were a staple of the nineteenth-century English kitchen, sitting between French quenelle work and the older tradition of boiled suet puddings tied in a cloth. The mortar-and-sieve method was standard for any forcemeat before mechanical mincers became common in middle-class households, and it is the reason recipes of this kind read as so laborious now. Haddock was the obvious choice on the east coast of Britain: cheap, firm, and lean enough that the added suet or marrow was structural rather than indulgent. The mixture is essentially a template, and much the same formula appears elsewhere in Victorian books under whiting, cod, or salmon, with the sauce doing most of the work of distinguishing one from another.