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Ling, Slices of, Stewed
Cut about one pound of fresh ling into slices nearly three-quarters of an inch thick, rub them over with pepper and salt, and fry them in boiling fat for about ten minutes. Place them in a stewpan, and cover them with a little stock. Put with them a sprig of parsley, a stick of celery, a quarter of a blade of mace, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of white pepper, and a small piece of thin lemon-rind, and simmer gently for half an hour. Put the slices on a hot dish, and after straining the gravy, and thickening with flour and butter, pour it boiling over them. Serve as hot as possible. A tea-spoonful of lemon-juice may be added or not. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for two persons.
A straightforward Victorian fish stew, but the timings belong to an era when fish was cooked far harder than we cook it now. The essential judgement is when to stop.
- The fish itselfLing (Molva molva) is a long, lean relative of the cod, once cheap and abundant in British markets and now rarely seen on a fishmonger's slab. Cod, hake, pollock or haddock loin all behave the same way; note that fish sold as "ling" in Australia and New Zealand is a different species again.
- Slice thicknessThree-quarters of an inch is about 2 cm — thick steaks cut across the loin, not fillets. Thinner slices are more likely to break up during the simmer.
- Boiling fatThis means deep or shallow frying in fat hot enough to seize the surface, roughly 350–375F. The purpose is colour and a skin that holds the slices together, not cooking them through, so two to three minutes a side is plenty rather than the full ten.
- The total cooking timeTen minutes of frying followed by half an hour of simmering will reduce modern fish to threads. Brown the slices briefly, then poach them in the seasoned stock for 8–10 minutes at a bare tremble, until the flesh just parts. If you want the flavour of the longer simmer, simmer the stock with the aromatics first and add the fish at the end.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, sold either as whole "blades" or ground. A quarter blade is a small fragment; a pinch of ground mace, about an eighth of a teaspoon, is the practical equivalent.
- "A little stock"No quantity is given. Enough to come two-thirds up the slices is right — around 250 ml for a pound of fish. A light fish or chicken stock suits; a strongly reduced brown stock will bully the flavour.
- ThickeningFlour and butter here most likely means kneaded butter (beurre mani"): equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, whisked into the strained, boiling liquid in small pieces. Roughly 15 g of each will thicken 250 ml to a coating sauce.
- Yield and costSufficient for two, as stated. The 8d. price is a Victorian market figure and has no modern equivalent; it is quoted here only as an indication that ling was an inexpensive fish.
Ling was a working-class fish in nineteenth-century Britain: long, coarse-textured, landed in quantity from northern waters and much of it sold dried and salted into the wider salt-fish trade. Cassell's gives it space, and the recipe leans on stock, mace, celery and lemon-rind — the seasonings are doing the work that a more expensive fish would not need. The method itself, frying to colour and then finishing in a small quantity of thickened stock, is the standard Victorian treatment for any firm white fish. Ling has largely dropped out of British domestic cooking since, partly through declining landings and partly because the name now attaches to unrelated species in other markets, though it still turns up in Scandinavian and Iberian salt-fish traditions.