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HADDOCK, STUFFED (a la Waterford)
Open a fresh haddock down the middle without separating the two fillets, and take out the backbone. Make a stuffing of whiting (see WHITING FORCEMEAT), to which add some chopped mushroom, and season with savoury herbs. Stuff the inside of the fish with this, and tie in form with string. Place in the fish-kettle with white wine and fish stock sufficient to half cover the fish, boil slowly, and baste often while cooking. Lift the fish when done; skim the fat from the liquor, and strain. Add to the liquor the same quantity of bechamel (see BECHAMEL SAUCE), reduce to the proper consistency, and thicken with cream. Arrange the fish on a dish, and cover it with the sauce.
A braised stuffed haddock with a reduction sauce — straightforward once you accept that the fish is only half-submerged and effectively cooks by a mix of poaching and steaming. Two things need translating: the fish kettle, and the forcemeat the recipe sends you elsewhere for.
- The hinge: keep the liquid below a boil"boil slowly" here is best read as a bare tremble rather than an active boil. A true rolling boil will shred the opened fillets and squeeze the stuffing out of the cavity, and it will make the finished liquor cloudy so the sauce never comes clear.
- Fish kettle substituteA roasting pan on the hob across two burners, or a large deep saute pan, does the job. What matters is that the fish lies flat and the liquid comes only halfway up; lining the pan with parchment or a folded cloth makes lifting the fish out in one piece far easier than trying to slide a spatula under it.
- Whiting forcemeatThe cross-reference is to a pounded fish stuffing; Victorian versions of this kind are usually bound with soaked breadcrumbs and egg, though the entry itself should be checked. Whiting is scarce at most counters — any lean white fish (pollock, hake, cod trim) blitzed with soaked crumbs and enough egg to bind gives much the same result. Season it firmly; it is bland by nature.
- Boning the haddockOpening the fish and lifting the backbone out while leaving the two fillets joined is work a fishmonger will do on request. Ask for the head and frame — they make the fish stock the recipe assumes you already have.
- Tying"Tie in form with string" means three or four loops of butcher's twine at intervals along the body, snug but not cinched. Overtightening pushes the stuffing out at both ends as the fish firms up.
- TimingThe original gives none. A 2-3 lb stuffed haddock needs roughly 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer; go by the stuffing, which should read 145F at the centre, rather than by the flesh, which will be done well before it.
- The sauceSkim and strain the cooking liquor, then add an equal quantity of bechamel and reduce to the proper consistency as the recipe directs; if you prefer, reduce the liquor first, since a milk-based sauce catches easily over reduction. Finish with cream. The wine-to-stock ratio is left open; equal parts is a reasonable reading.
- YieldA fish of this size serves four as a main course. Serve it whole and cut across into thick slices at the table so each portion shows the ring of forcemeat.
This entry, like most late-Victorian English kitchen dictionaries, runs on a French grammar of cookery with English fish, and shows the seam plainly: a North Sea haddock treated as a filet de poisson farci, boned, stuffed with a pounded fish panada, braised in wine and stock, and masked with bechamel enriched by the reduced cooking liquor. The "a la Waterford" tag is the sort of geographical garnish that Victorian recipe compilers attached freely, and it need not be taken as evidence of a documented origin in Waterford itself. What is genuinely of the period is the economy of the method — one fish yields the frame for its own stock, the trimmings support the forcemeat, and the poaching liquor becomes the sauce.