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Mullet, Grey, Boiled
Put large mullet into cold water, salted in the proportion of two ounces of salt to every two quarts of water. Bring the water quickly to the boil, then simmer until done. Small mullet, like other small fish, should be put into almost boiling water. Serve with anchovy or caper sauce, and plain melted butter. Time to boil, a quarter to half an hour. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
A plain salt-water poach of the sort Cassell's uses as a template for whole round fish. The instructions are sound in principle; the timing belongs to an era of much larger fish and no thermometers.
- The hinge: never let it boilAfter the initial rise, hold the water at a bare shiver, around 160-170F, with no more than an occasional bubble breaking. Grey mullet is a soft-fleshed fish and a rolling boil will split the skin and shred the belly before the centre is done.
- The brine, in modern termsTwo ounces of salt to two imperial quarts is about 57 g to 2.3 litres, a brine of roughly 2.5 per cent: weaker than seawater but far more than a pinch. It seasons the flesh and firms it. Do not reduce it.
- Cold start or hot startThe distinction is real. A large whole fish started in cold water heats evenly and the skin stays intact; a small one dropped into near-boiling water sets its surface at once and does not leach flavour into the pot. The recipe sets no weight threshold, only 'large' against 'small'.
- TimingA quarter to half an hour assumes a fish of several pounds. Reckon instead on 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest point, measured from the moment the water reaches the poaching temperature. A 1 1/2 lb mullet is usually done in 10-12 minutes; the flesh should part cleanly from the backbone at the dorsal fin.
- Buying and preparing"Grey mullet" is flathead or thick-lipped mullet, a coastal fish sold whole and sometimes labelled by its French name mulet. It is heavily scaled and needs vigorous scaling under cold water; scrape out the black lining of the belly cavity, which carries most of the muddy flavour the fish is unfairly known for.
- The saucesAnchovy sauce here is melted butter thickened with flour and sharpened with anchovy essence, not the bottled fish sauce of Southeast Asia. Caper sauce is the same base with capers and a little of their vinegar. Both exist to cut a slightly oily fish; a plain lemon-and-butter dressing does the same job.
- Cost and yieldEightpence a pound placed mullet among the more modestly priced fish of the period, well below turbot or salmon. A 2 lb whole fish serves two generously or three at a table with other courses.
Grey mullet occupied an awkward place in Victorian fish cookery: abundant in British estuaries and harbours, cheap, and permanently under suspicion because it feeds on the bottom and on the mud of tidal creeks, which can give fish taken from foul water a distinctly earthy taste. Cassell's treats it matter-of-factly as a boiling fish, grouping it with the household staples rather than the luxuries, and steers it towards the strong butter sauces, anchovy and caper, that Victorian cooks reached for whenever a fish needed lifting. It should not be confused with red mullet, an unrelated fish that was expensive and fashionable; the Romans' famously prized mullus was that one, not this. Grey mullet's chief claim to distinction is its roe, salted and pressed into the hard block known in English as botargo and in Italian as bottarga, a preparation generally traced to the eastern Mediterranean and recorded in English kitchens long before this book was compiled.