Home › The Principles of Cookery › Haddocks in Brown Sauce
Haddocks in Brown Sauce
Take eight or nine small haddocks; wash, dry, and empty them, and put three of them into a saucepan, with a quart of good stock, a bunch of sweet herbs, a large onion, and the thin rind of half a lemon. Cut the meat from the remaining half-dozen fish in fillets (see HADDOCK FILLETS OF), remove the skin, and put the heads, tails, and trimmings into the saucepan with the gravy. Simmer gently for an hour and a half, then strain the gravy, season it rather highly with spices and cayenne, and brown it with a little brown roux (see GRAVY, BROWN, ROUX FOR). Put in the slices of fish and boil them about ten minutes. When sufficiently cooked, lift them carefully out with a slicer, place them on a hot dish, and pour the gravy over them. A little claret may be added, and it is an improvement to add also two dozen oysters, with their liquor. Time, two hours and a half. Probable cost of small haddocks suitable for this purpose, 3d. to 6d. each. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian fish stew built on its own stock, with two timings that modern practice has reversed. Read those first.
- The hinge: stock timeFish frames turn bitter and glue-like if simmered long. Twenty to thirty minutes extracts everything worth having; the recipe's hour and a half is what gives old fish stocks their muddy, gluey reputation. Strain as soon as it tastes clean and sweet.
- Poach the fillets, do not boil themTen minutes of boiling will shred haddock fillets and squeeze them dry. Bring the sauce to a bare shiver, slide the fillets in, and give them three to five minutes depending on thickness; they are done when the flesh just parts.
- Oysters last, off the heatAdd the shucked oysters and their strained liquor at the very end and let them warm through for a minute or two. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber. The liquor is salty, so hold back on seasoning until it is in.
- Quantities and vesselsA quart of stock in an English book of this date is 40 fl oz, so about 5 cups. "A bunch of sweet herbs" is a bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied. "Spices" here means a light hand with mace, allspice or a little grated nutmeg, not a curry-scale measure.
- Brown rouxEqual weights butter and flour cooked to the colour of a hazelnut shell; 1 to 2 oz of each will thicken this quantity, depending on how heavy a coating you want. Whisk the hot strained stock into it rather than dropping raw roux into the pan.
- Buying the fishNine whole small haddock is more fish than most modern kitchens want to handle. Buy about 2 lb of skinned haddock fillet plus a pound of white-fish bones and heads from the fishmonger; ask for cod, haddock or plaice frames and avoid oily fish, which will ruin the stock.
- The claretA splash of dry red wine turns up in Victorian brown fish sauces. Add it to the strained stock and reduce briefly before thickening, so the raw alcohol cooks off.
- Yield and timingSix to eight as written, four generously. The stated two and a half hours collapses to about an hour once the stock is treated sensibly. Serve with plain boiled potatoes to take the sauce.
Haddock was one of the great cheap fishes of the Victorian table, and the prices given here, threepence to sixpence a fish, place it squarely among everyday food rather than dinner-party fare. What lifts the dish is its method: the trimmings, heads and tails of the filleted fish are turned into the very stock that becomes the sauce, so nothing leaves the kitchen unused. That thrift sits beside two grander touches, claret and two dozen oysters. Oysters were cheap enough in much of nineteenth-century Britain to be used as a garnish for a sixpenny fish, though prices climbed as the beds were fished out later in the century. The brown roux and the highly spiced gravy reflect the anglicised French cookery that ran through the Victorian household manuals, in which almost any fish or meat could be sent to table under a dark, well-seasoned sauce.