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Hake, Baked
Cut four pounds of hake into slices rather more than half an inch thick. Dry them well, and rub them over with flour. Grate four ounces of stale crumbs of bread. Mix with them a table-spoonful of finely-minced parsley, a tea-spoonful of minced onions, half a salt-spoonful of salt, and a quarter of a salt-spoonful of pepper. Put an ounce of good butter or dripping at the bottom of a pie-dish, and sprinkle a little chopped parsley and onion over; then place the slices of hake upon it, first covering them thickly with the seasoned crumbs. Divide two ounces of butter or dripping into little pieces, and lay them here and there in the dish. Pour a quarter of a pint of gravy or water underneath, and bake in a good oven. Send the gravy cooked with them to table with the fish. It is an improvement to grate a little cheese over the fish before putting it in the oven. If the flavour of the onions is disliked, they should be omitted, and a small bunch of sweet herbs or a few chopped mushrooms substituted. Time, about half an hour. Probable cost, hake, 3d. or 4d. per pound. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A plain Victorian baked fish dish that works well today, with two things worth adjusting: the oven is hotter than the vague wording suggests, and the half-hour bake is too long for slices this thin.
- The timing is the hingeSlices a little over half an inch thick will very likely be done well before the stated half hour; start checking at 15 to 20 minutes, allowing longer for a full dish of four pounds. Pull the dish when the flesh turns opaque and flakes at the thickest point, around 145F.
- "A good oven"The phrase points to a well-heated rather than a slow oven; roughly 400-425F is a reasonable modern equivalent, though the book states no temperatures. The higher heat is what crisps the crumb coating before the fish overcooks.
- Salt-spoon and quarter-pintA salt-spoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, so half a salt-spoon of salt is about an eighth of a teaspoon and the pepper a scant pinch. Season more generously to taste. A quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup.
- Hake and its substitutesHake is still sold, though usually as fillets rather than bone-in steaks. Cod, pollock, haddock or any firm white fish takes the treatment identically; adjust the time down further for thin tail-end fillets.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was the everyday alternative to butter in a Victorian kitchen and gives a savoury, slightly meaty result. Butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, is the straightforward modern choice.
- The crumbsFour ounces of grated stale bread is about two cups of coarse fresh-bread crumbs, not dried packaged crumbs, which pack much denser and will turn pasty. Tear up a day-old loaf and pulse it.
- The liquidWater gives a thin pan juice; a light fish or chicken stock, or a dry white wine and water mixture, makes the "gravy" sent to table worth sending. Pour it under the fish only, so the crumb topping stays dry.
- YieldFour pounds of fish serving six to eight assumes a Victorian dinner of several courses. As a main course with vegetables it feeds four to six comfortably.
Hake was the cheap fish of the Victorian table, and the "3d. or 4d. per pound" here tells the story: it landed in quantity around the British and Irish coasts, was, by most accounts, less esteemed by English cooks than cod and turbot, and a good part of the catch is said to have gone south to Spain and Portugal, where it has long been prized. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was written for the middle-class household that had to feed a family well on a fixed budget, and this entry is typical of its method: an inexpensive fish, a crumb crust to stretch it, dripping as the frugal alternative to butter, and a bracket of variations at the end so the same dish can be made three ways depending on what is in the larder. Hake stocks in the northeast Atlantic are generally reckoned to have been heavily fished through the twentieth century, and the fish is once again a sensible everyday choice.