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JOHN DORY (en Matelote)
Chop small a dozen oysters, and mix them thoroughly with three boned anchovies, also finely minced, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, four table-spoonfuls of finely-grated bread-crumbs, and three ounces of butter or chopped suet. Mix all thoroughly, add pepper and salt to taste, the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, and eight tables-spoonfuls of new milk. Put all into a stewpan, stir briskly over a gentle fire until the mixture thickens, then fill the Dory with the forcemeat, and sew up the slit. Put the fish into a saucepan, barely cover it with cold water, and put with it a turnip, a carrot, a bunch of savoury herbs, a large sprig of parsley, a quarter of a pint of vinegar, half a tea-spoonful of bruised celery-seed, and a table-spoonful of salt. Boil gently until the fish is sufficiently cooked. Serve on a hot dish, and send the following sauce to table in a tureen with it. Melt a piece of butter the size of an egg in a saucepan, fry in this three small onions, sliced very thin, add a table-spoonful of minced parsley, and another of minced chives, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, a glass of claret, and a glass of the liquid in which the fish was boiled. Stew gently for a few minutes until the onions are done, strain through a cloth, and then add half a pint of good brown sauce. Boil until the sauce coats the spoon. A few drops of essence of anchovy and the juice of half a lemon may be added, if liked. Time, a quarter of an hour after boiling for a moderate-sized fish. Probable cost of John Dory, 3s. to 5s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A stuffed and poached whole fish with a claret-based sauce, written for a cook who already has brown sauce on hand. The two components are best made in parallel, since the sauce needs a ladle of the fish liquor.
- The hinge: keep the poach at a bare tremble"boil gently" here points to water barely moving rather than a rolling boil. A rolling boil will burst the skin and force the forcemeat out through the sewn slit before the flesh is set.
- TimingA quarter of an hour after the water comes up is what the recipe allows for what it calls a moderate-sized fish, but the stuffing changes the arithmetic. Go by the thickest part of the flesh at the backbone rather than the clock, and allow the fish to sit in its liquor a few minutes off the heat.
- The forcemeat is pre-cookedThickening the oyster, egg and milk mixture in a stewpan before stuffing is deliberate: it sets the panade so the filling holds together in the poaching liquid. Stir constantly over low heat and pull it off the moment it thickens, or the egg yolks will curdle.
- OystersA dozen shucked oysters is about 6-8 oz of meat. Chopped and cooked into a forcemeat, small or bottled oysters do the job perfectly well; there is no reason to spend on large ones.
- Vessels and measuresA "stewpan" is a wide, straight-sided saucepan. A quarter of a pint of vinegar is 5 fl oz by imperial measure. The size of a "glass" of claret is not defined in the text; Victorian wineglass measures are commonly reckoned at around 2 fl oz. Butter "the size of an egg" is roughly 2 oz.
- New milkSimply fresh, unsoured whole milk. Eight tablespoons is 4 fl oz.
- Brown sauceHalf a pint of "good brown sauce" assumes a made espagnole or a brown roux-based stock sauce, not the bottled condiment sold under that name in Britain today. A well-reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly with a brown roux is the intended thing.
- Substituting the fishJohn Dory is landed as a bycatch and is not always easy to find whole. Any firm-fleshed flat or deep-bodied white fish of similar size that can be boned through a slit will take the same treatment.
- YieldSix to eight, as the original states, though that assumes a multi-course meal. Four is a more realistic modern main course from a 2-3 lb fish.
John Dory, Zeus faber, is the ugly, thin-bodied fish with a dark thumbprint on each flank, long prized in France and Britain for firm, sweet flesh disproportionate to its unpromising appearance. "En matelote" borrows the name of the French sailor's stew of freshwater fish braised in wine with onions and herbs; here the technique has been anglicised into a plain court-bouillon poach with the wine held back for a separate sauce sent to table in a tureen, which is very much the late-Victorian dinner-service habit. The oyster-and-anchovy forcemeat belongs to the same period logic, when oysters were often still used as a bulking and seasoning ingredient rather than treated purely as a luxury, though prices were rising as the beds were exhausted, and anchovy essence or bottled ketchup did the work of concentrated savour that a modern kitchen would take from reduced stock. The fish is quoted at three to five shillings, a real outlay for a Victorian household, which suggests the dish was a company piece rather than everyday cooking.