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Perch, Water Souchy
This is the best way to dress perch. When they are plentiful, take the smallest fish, clean them, cut them into pieces, and boil slowly with some parsley-roots, and whole pepper, and salt, till a strong broth is obtained. Strain the broth through fine muslin, pick out the parsley-roots, slice them, and return them to the strained liquor, in which the larger perch, previously crimped, are to be boiled. When about done, introduce a few bunches of parsley previously scalded in water to preserve their green colour. Serve in a deep dish, accompanied by slices of brown bread-and-butter. No sauce is required, the broth, with the addition at table of pepper and salt, being sufficient.
A one-pot fish soup that stands or falls on the broth. The small fish are sacrificed entirely to flavour the liquor; the good fish are poached in it and served in it.
- The hinge: keep the broth at a bare shiverPerch flesh is lean and fine-flaked, and a rolling boil will shred it and cloud the liquor, which is served as-is. Hold the pan at a lazy simmer, around 180F, and count on 6-10 minutes for a whole fish of half a pound, less for fillets.
- Parsley-rootsThese are Hamburg parsley, a parsnip-like root grown for eating rather than the leaf; still sold in Eastern European and some farmers' markets. Parsnip cut small is the usual substitute, though it is sweeter, so use rather less than you would of parsley root.
- CrimpedCrimping meant gashing a very fresh (often still-living) fish to the bone and plunging it into cold water so the flesh set firm. Nothing is lost by skipping it; score the sides of a fresh fish two or three times to help even cooking and leave it at that.
- Quantities, which the recipe never givesFor four people, reckon on about 1 lb of small fish or fish frames for the broth, 2 to 2.5 lb of larger perch to serve, two or three parsley roots, a teaspoon of peppercorns and water to cover by an inch. The first boiling wants 30-40 minutes, no more, or the bones turn the stock bitter.
- Sourcing the fishPerch is seldom seen in British fishmongers, though yellow perch is sold commonly enough around the Great Lakes in the United States. Walleye (pike-perch), or other lean white fish such as small sea bass, bream or whiting, will take the same treatment; ask for the heads and frames to make the first broth.
- The scalded parsleyA short scald, half a minute in boiling water, helps fix the green; add the bunches right at the end, as the recipe does, since longer in hot broth turns them olive.
- BonesPerch carry sharp dorsal spines and fine pin bones, and the fish is served whole in its liquor. Trim the dorsal fin with scissors before cooking and warn anyone eating it.
- ServingA deep dish, as the recipe says, the fish in its broth, brown bread and butter cut thin on the side. It is a soup and a fish course at once and needs nothing else before it but perhaps a glass of something dry.
Water souchy is an anglicisation of the Dutch waterzootje, generally traced to a verb meaning to boil, a dish of freshwater fish poached in its own broth with root vegetables and herbs. It reached England by way of the Low Countries and became a fixture of the Thames-side taverns at Greenwich and Blackwall, the trade belonging mainly to the nineteenth century, where whitebait dinners and souchy of flounder or perch were the draw for parties coming down the river. Cassell's places it under perch, a fish then commonly caught in English rivers and canals; a household with an angler in it would have small ones to spare, which is exactly the economy this recipe assumes. The brown bread and butter is not garnish but the traditional accompaniment, recorded with souchy in English cookery writing throughout the period.