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Pate of Fish
Boil and mash smoothly, with an ounce of butter and a spoonful of milk or cream to each pound, as many potatoes as will make a border about three inches high within the rim of the dish which it is intended to use; three pounds of potatoes will be sufficient for a moderate-sized dish. Raise this border, ornament it in any fanciful way, then brush it over with beaten egg, and put it in a hot oven until it is lightly browned. Have ready some hot crab, or some fish stewed in sauce, and when the potatoes are coloured put in the preparation, and serve very hot. To prepare the fish--Take two pounds of cold boiled fish, which has been picked carefully from the bones and broken into small pieces, warm these in a pint of good white sauce, nicely flavoured and seasoned; stir it gently over the fire until the fish is hot, then turn the whole into the hollow in the centre of the potatoes. If no stock is at hand, the white sauce may be made as follows. Simmer the bones of the fish, with a handful of parsley, an onion stuck with one clove, half a blade of mace, and a pint of water, until the liquid is reduced one-half; strain it, and mix with it four table-spoonfuls of thick cream, season with salt and cayenne, and thicken with a little flour and butter. It is then ready for the fish. To prepare the crab--Pick the meat from the shell, mix with it the eighth of its bulk in finely-grated bread-crumbs, and season with salt, cayenne, and a little grated nutmeg. Pound the mixture in a mortar, moisten with a little gravy, which has been thickened with flour and butter, add a table-spoonful of sherry, and stir the preparation over the fire until it is quite hot; squeeze the juice of a small lemon over it, and it is ready for use. Time to warm the fish in the sauce--until it is quite hot, without boiling. Probable cost, according to the nature of the fish. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A duchesse-potato border filled with creamed fish or dressed crab — a Victorian way of turning yesterday's boiled fish into a dish worth carrying to the table. Nothing here is difficult, but the potato work rewards attention.
- The hinge: never let the fish boilThe flakes are already cooked; bringing the sauce to a boil breaks them into a mush and can curdle the cream. Warm the sauce to a bare steam, fold the fish in, and hold it at about 160-170F until hot through, three or four minutes.
- "A hot oven"Read that as 425-450F. The border only needs to set and take colour, six to ten minutes; it is not being baked through. A brief pass under the broiler does the same job if the oven is already busy.
- Potato for pipingThree pounds of potatoes gives a border about three inches high on what the recipe calls a moderate-sized dish; something around 10 inches across is a reasonable reading, though no size is stated. Use floury potatoes (russet, Maris Piper), dry them in the pan after draining, and pass them through a ricer — a food processor makes them gluey and they will not hold a ridge. The ounce of butter and spoonful of milk per pound is deliberately stiff; the mixture must stand up.
- "Ornament in any fanciful way"A piping bag with a large star tube is the modern equivalent of the Victorian forcing bag. Failing that, raise the wall with a spoon and score it with a fork. Chill the piped border for ten minutes before egg-washing and it will keep its shape better in the oven.
- The fish sauceA pint of water reduced by half with the bones and aromatics gives about half a pint of fish stock; with four tablespoons of cream and a roux thickening it comes out short of the pint of finished sauce the recipe calls for, so let it down with more stock or water as needed. Half a blade of mace is somewhere around an eighth to a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, and it is worth including.
- "Gravy" in the crabIn Victorian usage this means a light stock or meat broth rather than a modern thickened brown gravy. Fish or light chicken stock thickened with a small beurre manié will serve; a dark gravy would overwhelm the crab.
- Crab quantityThe original gives no weight. A pound of picked white and brown meat fills a moderate dish; the eighth-of-its-bulk of breadcrumbs works out at roughly a quarter cup to that pound. Pounding in a mortar was to make a smooth paste — a few pulses in a processor does it, though leaving some texture suits modern taste better.
- Which fishAny firm cooked white fish: cod, haddock, hake, pollock. Save the bones and head from the fish you poach, or ask for a frame at the counter; without them the sauce has no backbone. Smoked haddock makes a good half of the two pounds.
- YieldFive or six as written, as a main course with nothing but a green vegetable alongside.
Dishes built inside a piped wall of potato were common in nineteenth-century English cookery and echo the French pommes duchesse, and they served to present reheated fish as something deliberate rather than thrifty. The book calls it a pâté in the older, broader sense of a filling enclosed by a crust — here a crust of potato rather than pastry. The instruction to use "cold boiled fish" is the point of the recipe: the whole apparatus of white sauce, mace, cayenne and a spoonful of sherry exists to make a second meal taste like a first. The crab variation sits alongside the same period's fondness for potted and dressed shellfish, seasoned hard with cayenne and nutmeg and sharpened at the last moment with lemon.