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PLAICE, BAKED (au Gratin)
The larger the plaice for this purpose the better. Salt and dry the fish, rinse it, and let it drain. Take an oval dish that will hold the plaice and stand the heat of the oven. Smear the bottom well with butter; then scatter over it a layer of grated bread-crumbs and chopped parsley, with a little chopped shallot and three chopped mushrooms, if liked. On this lay the plaice, white side uppermost; pour on it a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice and two table-spoonfuls of gravy; afterwards sprinkle on it fine bread-crumbs and parsley. Set the dish in the oven, which should be brisk enough to brown the bread-crumbs. As soon as any juice comes away, baste the fish with it, and continue to do so till it is done enough. Serve in the dish in which it was baked, and just before serving sprinkle over the fish a few drops of lemon-juice.
A straightforward gratin of whole flatfish, and the only real skill is keeping the crumbs from burning before the fish is cooked through. A few of the instructions need translating.
- Oven heat"Brisk enough to brown the bread-crumbs" points to a hot oven, somewhere in the region of 400-425F, though the recipe gives no figure. Much hotter and the crumb layer risks scorching before a thick plaice is done at the bone.
- Salt and dry, then rinseThis reads as a short dry-salting to firm the flesh and draw off surface water; the recipe gives no time for it. Rinse it off, or the finished dish may be too salty once the crumbs and gravy reduce.
- White side uppermostPlaice has a dark, spotted upper side and a white underside. Baking it white side up presents the paler, neater surface and lets the crumbs brown against it.
- "Gravy"In a Victorian kitchen this is unsweetened brown or veal stock, not thickened meat gravy. Fish stock or a light chicken stock works; two tablespoons is all that is wanted, as it exists to moisten the crumbs and start the basting liquid.
- TimingThe recipe gives no time. A large whole plaice of 1.5-2 lb should take roughly 20-25 minutes at that heat; it is done when the flesh lifts cleanly from the backbone.
- BastingThe instruction to baste as soon as juice appears is the hinge. Plaice is lean and dries out quickly, and the crumbs on top will go dusty and dry without being spooned over with the pan liquid every few minutes.
- The dish itselfAn oval gratin dish or shallow enamelled roaster, generously buttered. It goes to table as it comes from the oven, so choose something presentable.
- YieldOne large plaice serves two generously, or three as part of a larger meal.
Plaice was among the cheapest and most plentiful fish in British markets through the nineteenth century, landed in quantity in the North Sea and treated in cookery books as a humbler stand-in for sole. Cassell's gives it a gratin treatment: au gratin is generally traced to the French for the browned crust scraped from a dish, and the method was one way of dressing an inexpensive fish so that it could be sent to table whole and looking like a dish worth having. The buttered dish, the bed of crumbs with parsley, shallot and mushroom beneath and a second crumb layer above is the classic French method, and the insistence that the fish be served in its baking dish reflects economy of washing-up.