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Plaice, Baked
Empty one or two moderate-sized plaice, sprinkle a little salt over them, let them lie for a couple of hours, then drain them, and dry them well with a soft cloth. Cut them across into slices about two inches wide; then mince finely half an ounce of onions, spread a portion of them at the bottom of a baking-dish, and put in an ounce of butter or good beef dripping, and a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley. Put the slices of plaice upon the onion, and cover with the remainder, mixed with a little chopped parsley and some finely-grated bread-crumbs. Add a little pepper and salt if necessary, lay an ounce of fat, broken into pieces, on the top of the fish, and pour in at the side a wine-glassful of stock or water. Put the dish into a well-heated oven. As soon as the flesh seems to shrink from the bone it is done enough. Serve the plaice with its own gravy. If the fish is not sufficiently browned in the baking, hold a red-hot shovel over it for a minute or two. Time to bake, from ten to twenty minutes, according to size and thickness. Probable cost, plaice, when plentiful, 6d. or 8d. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward tray-baked flatfish that depends almost entirely on not overcooking it. The quantities are small and the whole thing takes longer to salt than to bake.
- The hinge: doneness"As soon as the flesh seems to shrink from the bone" is the only timing that matters — plaice is thin and goes cottony fast. Check at 10 minutes at the thickest cut; the flesh should just part from the bone and still look moist.
- Oven heatA "well-heated oven" is not defined in the book; a hot oven, somewhere around 400F, is a reasonable modern reading. The bake is short, so the oven must be fully up to temperature before the dish goes in, or the fish stews in its liquid.
- Wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books a wine-glass is about 2 fl oz, a scant quarter cup. It is there to keep the crumbs and onion from scorching, not to poach the fish, so do not be generous with it.
- The saltingTwo hours of dry salting firms the flesh and draws water. The recipe has you drain and dry the fish well with a cloth rather than rinse it; either way, get it dry, or the finished dish may be too salty — which may be why the later seasoning is qualified as "if necessary."
- Beef drippingButter or dripping are both authentic; dripping gives a savoury, slightly beefy background that suits the onion and parsley. Any solid fat broken in pieces over the crumbs will do the same job of basting as it melts.
- The red-hot shovelA fire shovel heated in the grate served as a makeshift salamander, browning a surface without further cooking. Use the broiler for a minute instead, watching it, since the crumb layer is thin.
- Buying the fishThe recipe allows "one or two moderate-sized plaice," perhaps 1.5 to 2 lb of whole fish for the larger version. Flounder, dab or lemon sole can be substituted, though lemon sole is firmer and a little thicker; if using fillets rather than bone-in slices, cut the bake to 8-10 minutes and judge by opacity rather than by the bone.
- YieldThree to four servings as written, which assumes fish as one course among several. As a main dish with potatoes it will feed two.
Plaice was one of the cheapest sea fish on the British market in the late nineteenth century, landed in quantity by the North Sea trawl fleets and moved inland by rail; at sixpence or eightpence apiece it sat well below turbot or sole in both price and prestige, which is exactly why a household cookery dictionary would treat it at length. The method here — salt and parsley, capped with crumbs and fat, moistened with a splash of stock — is the standard economical baked-fish formula of the period, designed to make a watery, thin-fleshed fish taste of something and to be cooked in the same dish it is served from. The instruction to brown the top with a red-hot shovel is a survival from open-hearth cookery, still practical in a house with a coal range and no top heat in the oven.