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Haddock, Rechauffe Of
Lift the meat from the bones of a cold cooked fish in neat pieces, remove the skin, and put them into a baking-dish. Season them with a little pepper and salt, and pour over them some good melted butter, flavoured with essence of anchovy. Allow a quarter of a pint of melted butter to every pound of meat. Grate some bread-crumbs on the top, and put little bits of butter here and there. Bake in a moderate oven. Serve on a hot dish, with pickled walnuts as an accompaniment. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the cold fish. Sufficient for two persons.
A Victorian use for yesterday's boiled haddock. The one thing to get right is what the book means by "melted butter" — it is a sauce, not a puddle of butter.
- "Melted butter" means butter sauceIn English cookery books of this period melted butter is a thickened sauce: a roux of about 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour per half pint of water or fish stock, whisked smooth and simmered a few minutes. Plain drawn butter will separate and leave the dish greasy rather than moist.
- A quarter of a pintImperial measure, so 5 fl oz — a scant 2/3 US cup of sauce per pound of picked fish. That is generous; it should coat the flakes, not submerge them.
- Essence of anchovyA thin, salty anchovy extract sold bottled. Anchovy paste thinned with a little of the sauce, or two or three mashed salted anchovies, gives the same effect. Add it off the heat and taste before salting, as it carries plenty of salt already.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. The dish only needs heating through and browning on top.
- Half an hour is too longThe fish is already cooked. Twenty minutes in a shallow dish is enough to heat it and colour the crumbs; longer and the flakes tighten and dry. If the top is pale, finish briefly under the broiler instead of extending the bake.
- Grated crumbsGrating a stale loaf gives coarse, dry crumbs that brown well. Fresh soft crumbs from a food processor absorb sauce and go sodden — dry them in a low oven first, or use panko.
- Cold cooked fish and food safetyUse fish that has been refrigerated promptly and is no more than a day or two old, and heat the dish through to steaming at the centre. Smoked haddock works as well as fresh, but reduce the anchovy.
- Pickled walnutsStill sold in Britain in jars; dark, soft and sharply spiced. A caper berry, cornichon or any sharp pickle stands in for the acid the dish needs against all that butter.
- YieldThe recipe says sufficient for two persons, and allows a quarter of a pint of sauce to every pound of meat; a pound of picked fish is roughly what a whole haddock of two pounds or a little more would yield. It reads as a supper or breakfast dish rather than a dinner course.
R rench French for rereheated — was the polite name Victorian cookery writers gave to made-over dishes, and books of this kind carried many of them because a household that bought fish whole and boiled it plain had leftovers by design. Haddock was among the cheaper sea fish landed in quantity at English ports once the railways could move it inland; the costing here is fourpence for everything but the fish itself. The combination of anchovy essence and pickled walnuts is characteristic of the period's English palate: both were common pantry items whose job was to push a bland, cold-cooked protein back toward savouriness, the same instinct that produced bottled sauces and mushroom ketchup. Naming the dish in French, meanwhile, was a small piece of dignity granted to what was frankly yesterday's dinner.