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HERRINGS (au Gratin)
Clean the fish and wipe them dry. Cut off the heads and tails, open them down the back, and take out the backbone and as many others as possible. Chop up a small piece of onion and a bunch of parsley, previously picked and washed; add a dessert-spoonful of finely-grated bread-crumbs, a tea-spoonful of mixed herbs, a little pepper and salt, and a few drops of lemon-juice. Mix all together, sprinkle the mixture upon the inner side of one herring, and lay the other herring upon it, making a sort of sandwich of the two. Put the fish thus placed one pair on the top of the other in a greased tin; lay small pieces of dripping here and there upon them, cover with a dish or greased paper, and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour, basting occasionally. Lift carefully upon a hot dish, and serve.
A plain Victorian treatment of a cheap, oily fish: two boned herrings sandwiched around a herb stuffing and baked. The main thing to correct is the timing, which belongs to a slower coal-fired oven than yours.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" is conventionally read as about 350F (175C); the book itself gives no figure. The dish is covered, so it steams as much as it bakes.
- TimingHalf an hour will dry out butterflied herring. A pair sandwiched together is thin — 15 to 20 minutes at 350F is enough, until the flesh flakes and reaches about 145F (63C) at the thickest point.
- Dessert-spoonfulBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon, conventionally about two teaspoons. The quantity of crumbs is small by design; this is a seasoning, not a bread stuffing.
- Mixed herbsBlends of this period commonly drew on thyme and marjoram, often with savory or sage, though the mixture was not standardised. Any dried mixed-herb blend works; use about a teaspoon total, and go light on the sage with fish.
- DrippingRendered fat saved from roast meat, most often beef. Butter or a neutral oil substitutes directly, though butter browns faster under the cover.
- Boning the fishSlitting down the back and lifting out the backbone leaves a butterflied fillet still joined at the belly. Run a thumb along the flesh to find remaining pin bones; herring has a great many, and small ones will remain no matter how carefully you work.
- Covering and bastingGreased paper is the period equivalent of a loose foil cover, and it is what keeps the fish from drying. Baste with the fat that renders out of the herring itself rather than adding more.
- YieldEach sandwiched pair is one generous portion. Four herrings make two servings, with boiled potatoes or brown bread and a wedge of lemon.
- On the nameNothing is browned or crusted here despite the title; "au gratin" seems to be attached loosely, on the strength of the breadcrumbs alone. If you want a crust, uncover for the last few minutes.
Herring was the cheapest sea fish in Britain through the nineteenth century, landed in enormous quantities from the North Sea fleets and sold fresh in coastal towns and inland by rail, or salted and smoked as bloaters and kippers everywhere else. Cassell's, a compendium aimed squarely at middle-class households running on a budget, gives it entries, and the French label attached to this one is characteristic of the period's habit of dressing plain English cookery in restaurant vocabulary — the fish is baked with breadcrumbs and dripping in a tin, which is about as far from a gratin dish as one can get. The sandwich construction has a practical logic behind it: two boned fish pressed together protect the herb mixture from the direct heat and keep the oily flesh from drying.