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PERCH (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Put into a saucepan as much cold water as will cover the fish, with half a dozen chives, a handful of parsley, and a little pepper and salt. Place it on the fire, and bring it to a boil. Wash the fish in lukewarm water to free it from slime, empty it, remove the gills and the fins, and scrape it carefully. Plunge it into the boiling water, and when done enough, which will be when the flesh gives way on being pressed with the finger, drain and dish it on a folded napkin, garnish with curled parsley, and send a sauce, made as follows, to table in a tureen. Mix two ounces of fresh butter smoothly with one ounce of flour. Add a quarter of a pint of milk, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. Stir the mixture over the fire without ceasing until it is on the point of boiling. Pour it into a tureen, add to it a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and serve very hot. Time to boil the fish, according to the size: small fish, ten minutes; large, half an hour. Probable cost, uncertain, perch being seldom offered for sale. Sufficient, a moderate-sized perch for each person.
A plain poached freshwater fish with a parsley-and-lemon butter sauce. Two things need attention: the fish is judged by feel rather than by the clock, and the sauce as written is stiff enough to stand a spoon in.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. With 2 oz butter and 1 oz flour that gives a very thick paste; most cooks will want to loosen it with another 4-5 fl oz of milk to a pouring consistency.
- The sauce must not boilStopping "on the point of boiling" is deliberate. The sauce is bound with flour and so is fairly stable, but with this much butter and the lemon juice in, a hard boil can turn it oily or grainy. Keep it below a simmer and whisk the final knob of butter in off the heat.
- A piece of butter the size of a walnutAbout half an ounce, or a tablespoon. Added at the end unmelted, it gives the sauce gloss and body.
- TimingHalf an hour is a long time for all but the largest whole perch. Poach at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil, and reckon roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder; fillets need 5-6 minutes. The finger test in the original is sound - the flesh should yield and part from the bone. Standard food-safety guidance for fish is 145F at the centre.
- Handling perchThe scales are small and tenacious and the dorsal fin is genuinely spiny; scale under running water working from tail to head, and cut the fin out with scissors rather than scraping over it. The lukewarm wash for slime is worth doing on any wild-caught freshwater fish.
- The poaching liquidChives, parsley, salt and pepper in water is the barest court bouillon. A splash of white wine or vinegar in the water firms the flesh and helps keep it white, and it will not fight the sauce.
- Chives"Half a dozen chives" most likely means six whole stalks rather than six chopped spoonfuls - a small bundle, which can be tied in with the parsley stems so it lifts out easily.
- ServingOne moderate perch per person, as the original says; a folded napkin on the platter absorbs the water that keeps seeping out of poached fish, and is still the neatest solution.
Perch was a fisherman's fish rather than a market fish in Victorian Britain, which is exactly why Cassell's cannot quote a price for it - "perch being seldom offered for sale" is a rare admission of defeat in a book that costs out almost everything. Freshwater fish reached the table largely through angling, estate ponds and country kitchens, while the fishmonger's trade ran on sea fish brought in by rail. The dressing a la maitre d'hotel - butter, chopped parsley, lemon juice, pepper - is the standard French treatment for plain-cooked fish and grilled meat, named for the steward of the house. Here it has been thickened with flour and milk into something closer to a parsley sauce.