Home › The Principles of Cookery › MULLET, RED (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
MULLET, RED (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Clean four red mullet, and wipe them quickly. Score them to the depth of a quarter of an inch, and lay them to steep in a small wine-glassful of salad-oil. Add a salt-spoonful of salt, and one of pepper, an onion, sliced, and a bunch of parsley in sprigs. When the fish have become well saturated, drain and put them on the gridiron. Let the fire be bright and even. In ten minutes the mullet will be done. Brown alike on both sides. Serve hot on a dish, with maitre d'hotel butter under them; about seven or eight ounces will be enough. Time, half an hour to steep in oil. Probable cost, 1s. to 2s. each.
A straightforward grill: oil-marinated whole fish over live coals, finished with a compound butter. Two things need attention — the vessel-free "gridiron" and the alarming quantity of butter.
- Gridiron means a grillAn iron grate of bars set over bright coals. A charcoal grill or a very hot ridged grill pan gives the same result; under a preheated broiler, 4-5 inches from the element, works as well. The rack must be hot and oiled or the skin will tear.
- A small wine-glassfulRoughly 2 fl oz, or a scant quarter cup, of olive oil — Victorian "salad-oil" was usually olive. That is enough to coat four fish, not to submerge them; turn them once or twice during the half-hour steep.
- A salt-spoonfulThe salt spoon of a Victorian condiment set held about a quarter teaspoon. So a quarter teaspoon each of salt and pepper for four fish, which is modest; season again after grilling.
- The butter is overstatedSeven or eight ounces of maitre d'hotel butter for four fish is a Victorian dinner-table quantity. Two to three ounces — butter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper — is plenty, and it should go on the hot dish so it melts under the fish rather than being poured over.
- Score shallowly, and whyTwo or three diagonal cuts a quarter-inch deep on each side let the marinade in and stop the skin from splitting as it contracts over the heat. Do not cut down to the bone.
- Ten minutes is for small fishRed mullet of 6-8 oz will cook through in about 10 minutes total, turned once. Larger fish need 12-15. The flesh at the thickest point by the backbone should be opaque and lift cleanly from the bone.
- If you cannot get red mulletTrue red mullet (Mullus surmuletus or barbatus) is common in Mediterranean and good European fishmongers and is unrelated to American "mullet." Small red snapper, porgy, sea bream or branzino grill the same way; buy them scaled and gutted but head-on.
- YieldOne fish each, four servings, as a fish course or a light main with bread and a green salad.
Red mullet had an outsized reputation long before Cassell's: Roman writers, Pliny among them, record extravagant prices paid for large specimens, and the fish kept its luxury status into the nineteenth century, when 1s. to 2s. apiece was real money for a single portion. It was often said to be the woodcock of the sea, and the practice of grilling it whole without gutting is traditionally explained on the grounds that the liver and roe were the best of it — Cassell's more cautious "clean" sidesteps the argument. The finish here, a la maitre d'hotel, is the plainest of the French butter dressings, parsley and lemon worked into softened butter and set melting under the fish; the name simply attaches the dish to the steward of the house, and it signalled a preparation so standard that a dictionary of cookery could assume its reader already knew it.