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HAKE, BAKED (another way)
Take four pounds of hake, cut it into slices rather more than half an inch thick, dry them well, and strew over them two tea-spoonfuls of salt, one of pepper, one of powdered ginger, and two of finely-minced onions, or, if the flavour of these is not liked, two tea-spoonfuls of powdered herbs, two-thirds parsley and one-third thyme. Put a piece of butter or good dripping the size of an egg into a deep dish, lay the slices of fish upon it. Make some sauce by mixing two ounces of flour smoothly with a pint of milk; boil the milk and flour, and with them an onion stuck with two cloves, and a pinch of pepper and salt. Strain the sauce, pour it over the fish, and bake in a good oven for half an hour. A little scalded and chopped parsley may be strewn over the top to improve the appearance of the dish. Sufficient for six or eight persons. Probable cost, 3d. or 4d. per pound.
A plain baked fish in a thick white sauce, from a period when hake was among the cheapest fish on the slab. The recipe is sound; only the oven, the sauce ratio and the timing need translating.
- The hinge: bake by the fish, not the clockHalf an hour may be more than slices of this thickness need (the recipe says "rather more than half an inch"). Start checking at 18-20 minutes; the fish is done when the flesh flakes at the bone and reads 145F. Hake is softer-fleshed than cod and can collapse into shreds if pushed.
- "A good oven"Treat this as a moderately hot oven, roughly 375-400F, by modern practice; the book gives no temperatures and the exact heat intended is a matter of inference.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. It is there to keep the underside of the fish from sticking and catching, so spread it over the base of the dish rather than leaving it in a lump.
- The pint and the sauceThis is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz (2 1/2 US cups). Two ounces of flour to that much milk gives a coating sauce rather than a pouring one. Boil it gently and stir, or the flour will catch on the pan bottom.
- Powdered herbsDried parsley and thyme ground fine. Two teaspoons of dried herb is roughly the equivalent of two tablespoons of fresh chopped, if you would rather use fresh.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping, saved from roasting. It gives a savoury edge butter does not; any solid fat with a clean flavour will serve, though butter suits fish better.
- Buying the fishFour pounds of hake is now a considerable outlay rather than the 3d. or 4d. per pound quoted here. Cod, haddock, pollock or coley all behave much the same way in this dish; ask for steaks or thick fillet, and drying the surface thoroughly with paper is worth the trouble, since wet fish waters down the sauce.
- YieldSix to eight as written, with potatoes. Halving it works cleanly, though keep the sauce a little thinner in a smaller dish so it does not dry out before the fish is through.
Hake was for centuries the poor relation of the British fish trade: abundant in the western approaches, soft-fleshed, quick to spoil, and consequently cheap. Some of the English and Irish catch appears to have been salted and shipped to Spain and Portugal, where the fish was and remains prized, and the domestic market treated it as a fish for economical families. That is why it appears here twice over, with a second, plainer method: the *Dictionary* was compiled in the 1870s and 80s for households that wanted variety without expense, and its instinct with a cheap fish is often to bury it in a well-seasoned white sauce and bake it. The onion stuck with two cloves, simmered in the milk and then strained out, is a familiar way of flavouring a b hthing in the recipe.