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Pike, Stewed in Gravy
Wash and cleanse a pike, and lard it thickly with bacon. Put it in a stewpan, with an ounce of butter, and with slices of veal and bacon under and over it, cover closely, and let it steam gently for a quarter of an hour. Pour upon it half a pint of gravy and a glass of wine, and let it simmer until done enough. Serve on a hot dish, with the gravy in which the fish was stewed poured around it. Time to stew, thirty to forty minutes, according to size. Probable cost, uncertain. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian treatment of a large freshwater fish, cooked whole and braised rather than poached. Two things need translating before you start: what "gravy" meant in this book, and how long a fish can actually stand over heat.
- "Gravy" is stockIn Cassell's, gravy means a strong brown meat stock, not a thickened pan sauce. Half a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. A "glass of wine" in period recipes usually means a wineglassful, generally reckoned at about 2 fl oz; the recipe does not say which wine, so a dry white or sherry is a reasonable choice.
- Total cooking timeFifteen minutes of steaming plus thirty to forty of simmering will overcook anything under about 5 lb. A whole pike of 3-4 lb will usually be done in 25-30 minutes total in a covered pan, when the flesh just parts from the backbone; freshwater fish should be taken to an internal 145F.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fatback or thick bacon through the flesh with a larding needle, which pike badly needs since it is very lean and dries out. Without a needle, bard instead: wrap the fish in bacon rashers and tie with string.
- The veal and bacon slicesThese form a bed and a cover, protecting the fish from direct heat and enriching the liquid. The recipe does not say what becomes of them; since only the gravy is poured around the fish, they were presumably lifted out, and the liquor is worth straining.
- Discard the roePike roe is a genuine irritant and has a long record of causing violent stomach upset. If your fish comes with it, throw it out rather than cooking it alongside.
- BonesPike carries a row of Y-shaped intermuscular bones along the upper fillet that no amount of cooking dissolves. Serve carefully, or ask the fishmonger to remove them if you are filleting rather than cooking whole.
- If you cannot get pikeWalleye, zander, or a firm sea fish such as cod loin or hake takes the same treatment. Reduce the time further for fillets: eight to ten minutes covered is plenty.
- Finishing the sauceThe liquor will be thin. Reduce it hard for a few minutes after the fish is lifted out, then whisk in a knob of cold butter off the heat before pouring it around the dish.
- YieldThe original says four to five persons but gives no weight, only "according to size"; four or five servings implies a fish of a few pounds served as one course among several. As a main course today it would feed three or four.
Pike was a prestige fish in England for centuries before it became an angler's curiosity — bred in monastic stew ponds, sold live, and priced above most sea fish in medieval and early modern markets. Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler (1653) gives a famously elaborate stuffed and roasted pike and calls it "a dish of meat too good for any but anglers or very honest men," which tells you how the fish was regarded. The problem cooks always had with it is dryness: pike is almost fatless, so nearly every historical recipe adds pork fat, butter, or a rich stock, and this one does all three. Cassell's "probable cost, uncertain" may simply reflect that pike reached most kitchens through a rod rather than a fishmonger, though the book gives no reason for the omission.