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Halibut, Boiled
This is the least satisfactory mode of cooking halibut. It is much better fried, baked, or made into a pie. Put five ounces of salt into a gallon of water. As soon as it is dissolved put in the fish, which must be in one piece, with the fins taken off. Bring the water to a boil, skim carefully, and simmer gently until the flesh of the fish will part easily from the bone. Serve on a hot napkin, garnish with parsley and sliced lemon, and send melted butter, and anchovy or shrimp sauce, to table with the halibut. Time for a piece weighing four pounds, twenty to thirty minutes. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 6d. or 8d. per pound.
A plain poach in salted water, with the fish started cold so it heats through evenly. The instruction that matters is the one Cassell's buries: simmer gently. Halibut is lean and firm, and a rolling boil shreds the flakes apart and squeezes out moisture.
- The brineFive ounces of salt to a gallon of water is roughly 140 g to 4.5 litres (an imperial gallon), a little over 3% — near seawater strength. It seasons the flesh and firms it slightly; poaching in unsalted water tends to leach flavour out of the fish.
- TimingTwenty to thirty minutes for four pounds is at the long end by modern practice. A thick centre-cut piece is generally taken off at around 125–135F (52–57C) at the bone — official food-safety guidance for fish is 145F (63C) — and a 4 lb piece at a bare simmer may reach that well before the thirty minutes given here. Halibut dries out quickly once past that point.
- "Part easily from the bone"This is the period doneness test and it is a reliable one, but check early and often — by the time the flesh falls away freely the fish may already be overcooked. Slide a thin knife along the bone at the thickest point instead of waiting for it to release on its own.
- In one pieceA single 4 lb piece needs a large deep pan or a fish kettle. Wrapping it in cheesecloth with the ends left long gives you handles for lifting it out intact; without that, a whole poached piece tends to break as it leaves the water.
- SkimmingThe grey scum that rises is coagulated protein. Take it off before it settles back onto the fish, or the finished piece looks muddy on a white napkin.
- The hot napkinA folded linen cloth laid on the platter to absorb poaching water so the fish is not sitting in a puddle. A warmed plate lined with a clean tea towel does the same job.
- The sauces"Melted butter" in Victorian usage is not clarified butter but a flour-thickened butter sauce, closer to a thin béchamel. Anchovy sauce was widely sold bottled, though cookery books also gave recipes for making it; a knob of anchovy paste or a couple of mashed fillets stirred into the butter sauce is the equivalent.
- YieldFive or six as written. A 4 lb bone-in piece gives roughly 2.5 lb of cooked flesh.
Cassell's opens by conceding that boiling is "the least satisfactory mode of cooking halibut," and gives the method anyway — a comprehensive Victorian dictionary of cookery generally covered the standard methods for a standard fish whether or not the compilers approved of them. Halibut was a relatively cheap North Atlantic flatfish in this period — the sixpence or eightpence a pound quoted here puts it below the usual price of turbot or sole — and it reached British kitchens in large pieces cut from fish that could run to a hundred pounds or more. Boiling large lean fish in salted water and serving it on a napkin with a butter-based sauce was a standard treatment for cod, halibut and turbot alike, and the accompanying anchovy or shrimp sauce supplied savour the fish itself lacked. Halibut stocks have since been fished hard, and Atlantic halibut is now a species to check against current sourcing advice before buying.