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Plaice, Boiled
Empty and clean the fish. Cut a slit through the skin from the head down the back, to prevent the white side breaking in boiling. Put the plaice into cold water with a table-spoonful of salt, and a wine-glassful of vinegar. Let it boil, and carefully remove the scum, then draw it to the side, and let it simmer gently until done enough. The time required will of course depend upon the size of the fish, and great care must be taken that the plaice does not break. Four or five minutes only will be sufficient for a moderate-sized fish. As soon as the flesh appears to shrink from the bone it is done enough. Large plaice, however, are best for boiling. Serve the fish on a neatly-folded napkin, garnish with parsley or sliced lemon, and send shrimp sauce, parsley sauce, or plain melted butter to table in a tureen. Probable cost, when plentiful, 6d. or 8d. each. Sufficient, one moderate-sized plaice for two persons.
A plain poach that depends almost entirely on restraint: plaice is a thin, delicate flatfish and the difference between just-set and collapsed is a minute or two.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: only one boil -- Bring the pan to a boil once to throw the scum, as the recipe directs, then pull it to the side so the water only trembles. A rolling boil is likely to break up the flesh and cloud the water; a thin flatfish holds together poorly under agitation.
- Wine-glassfulIn Victorian usage a wine glass is about 2 fl oz, so a quarter cup of vinegar. It firms the outer flesh and keeps the white side pale rather than adding noticeable flavour.
- The slit down the backCut through the dark skin along the backbone only. The skin contracts faster than the flesh in hot water, and without the cut the fish curls and splits on the white side.
- TimingFour or five minutes at a bare simmer is what the recipe allows for a moderate-sized fish; the text does not say whether that time runs from when the fish goes in or from when the pan is drawn aside. Test at the thickest point behind the head: as the recipe says, the flesh should shrink from the bone.
- Melted butterIn English cookery books of this period "melted butter" is a flour-thickened butter sauce, butter and a little flour cooked together and let down with water or fish liquor, not simply butter warmed in a pan. Proportions vary from book to book.
- Shrimp sauceThe same melted butter with a handful of small peeled brown shrimp folded in at the end and a little anchovy essence or cayenne. Add the shrimp off the heat so they do not toughen.
- The folded napkinA cloth on the platter absorbs the water that continues to weep out of a poached fish, which would otherwise thin the sauce on the plate. A folded tea towel or a bed of parsley does the same job.
- Yield and costOne moderate plaice serves two, as stated. The sixpence or eightpence quoted, and only "when plentiful," puts plaice among the cheap fish, well below sole.
Plaice was the everyday flatfish of Victorian Britain: abundant in the North Sea, landed cheaply, and sold in quantity in inland towns once the railways could carry ice-packed fish overnight. The instruction to prefer large plaice for boiling is sound cook's lore rather than snobbery, since a thicker fish survives the pan; small ones were left to the frying pan. The trio of accompaniments offered here, shrimp, parsley, or plain melted butter, is the standard range for boiled white fish, and the shrimp sauce in particular is often said to owe its place to the brown shrimp fisheries, where the tiny shrimp were potted in spiced butter and sold well beyond the ports.