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Melts, Ragout of Fish
Wash the melts in cold water, and then steep them in boiling water to which some vinegar has been added. Remove the melts from the water, dry them on a cloth, and cook for a quarter of an hour with parsley, chives, salt, and pepper, in as much well-flavoured veal stock as will barely cover them. A glass of white wine may be added if approved. Take out the melts when cooked, evaporate to the consistency of a sauce the liquid in which they were cooked, and thicken with two ounces of butter, mixed with a little flour. Before sending this dish to table, remember to squeeze the juice of a lemon into it. This ragout may also be prepared by another method. Cut into small pieces two onions, one carrot, and half a parsnip; fry them in butter with parsley, chives, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. When nearly ready add a little flour, and mix it well with the other materials. Stir in gradually three-quarters of a pint of unflavoured stock, or water, and half a glassful of white wine. Boil the materials in a stewpan over a steady fire until they are reduced one half. Now strain off the clear liquid, and simmer the melts in it for about twenty minutes. When about to send to table, mix with it the yolks of two eggs beaten up with cream; simmer the whole at a gentle heat, to thicken it; and add the juice of a lemon.
"Melts" here are fish milt — the soft roes of male fish, sold today as soft roe, laitance or (in the case of herring) simply "soft herring roes". Everything about the dish depends on treating them as the fragile custard-like things they are.
- What to buyHerring soft roes are the easiest to find, frozen or fresh at a fishmonger; carp and shad milt appear seasonally. Allow about 4-6 oz per person, which makes this recipe a starter for four from roughly 1 lb of roe.
- The vinegar steepThe acidulated hot water firms the outer membrane so the roes hold together in the sauce. A tablespoon of white wine vinegar per quart of water is enough; a minute or two of steeping does the job, and they should not be left to poach in it.
- Cooking time is the hingeA quarter of an hour, and certainly the twenty minutes of the second method, is longer than modern practice would allow; soft roe is generally done in a few minutes of the barest simmer, when just opaque and set.
- The egg liaisonIn the second version, the yolks and cream must be tempered with a ladle of the hot liquid and then held below a simmer. Once the sauce reaches a boil the yolks curdle and no amount of whisking brings it back.
- Wine and stock measuresA Victorian "glass" of wine is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the measure was never fixed, so half a glassful is a small splash. Three-quarters of a pint in an English book of this date is 15 fl oz, a shade under two US cups.
- Thickening with butter and flourTwo ounces of butter "mixed with a little flour" is beurre manié — work in about an ounce of flour, then whisk it into the reduced liquid in small pieces off the heat. Do not tip it in as a lump.
- ChivesChives here stand in for the whole onion family in a mild register; a small bunch, finely cut, added late so they keep their colour.
- ServingThe book gives no accompaniment. Soft roes in a lemon-sharpened sauce want plain toast, boiled potatoes or rice to absorb it, and the lemon should go in at the last moment or the acid dulls.
"Melt" (also milt) is an old English word for the soft roe of a male fish ack Old English milte in its spleen sense, with the roe sense often attributed to association with milk; by the nineteenth century it was standard butcher's and fishmonger's vocabulary — the same word covers the spleen of a pig or ox. Recipe books of the period treat melts as a dish in their own right rather than an afterthought, and give the two standard French-derived treatments: a quick braise in flavoured veal stock finished with beurre manié, and a longer mirepoix-based sauce strained clear and bound with egg yolks and cream. Herring roes on toast survived this style of cooking and remained a staple British savoury well into the twentieth century.