Home › The Principles of Cookery › Plaice, Filleted, and Stewed with Oysters
Plaice, Filleted, and Stewed with Oysters
Fillet two or three moderate-sized plaice. Dry them with a soft cloth, sprinkle a little salt over them, dredge them lightly with flour, and fry them in plenty of hot dripping until they are nicely browned. Beard and drain a dozen oysters. Put their liquor into a stewpan with a quarter of a pint of white stock or water, a glass of white wine, three anchovies, and a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Simmer it gently for a few minutes, then put in the fillets with a piece of butter rolled in flour, and let them remain until the sauce is smooth and thick. A minute or two before serving the fish put in the bearded oysters. When they are hot, lay the plaice on a hot dish, and serve the sauce round it. Time to fry the plaice, according to thickness, say until it is a bright golden colour. If the fish is very thick the pan should be held high above the fire. Probable cost of moderate-sized plaice when plentiful, 6d. or 8d. each. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian fish course that fries first and stews second, so the fillets keep some crispness while the oyster sauce reduces around them. The whole thing takes under twenty minutes once the fish is filleted.
- The oysters go in last, and brieflyBearded oysters need only to heat through in the hot sauce, a minute at most. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber and leak liquid that thins the sauce.
- BeardingTrim off the dark frilly gill mantle around the edge of each shucked oyster and reserve every drop of the liquor. Modern jarred oysters come already loose in their liquor and usually need only a quick check for shell fragments.
- QuantitiesA quarter of a pint imperial is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. "A glass of white wine" in books of this period is a wineglass, roughly 2 fl oz; a scant quarter cup is right, and more will make the sauce sharp.
- DrippingBeef dripping gives the browning the recipe expects. Clarified butter, lard or a neutral oil all work; plain butter will scorch before thin plaice fillets colour.
- AnchoviesThe recipe does not say which sort, but anchovies of this period were usually sold whole in salt and were probably saltier and stronger than modern oil-packed fillets. Start with three fillets or a scant teaspoon of anchovy paste, mash them into the stock so they dissolve, and salt only at the end.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre mani e: about a tablespoon of soft butter kneaded with a tablespoon of flour, dropped in in small pieces and swirled, not stirred hard, so the fillets stay whole. It thickens in two or three minutes of gentle simmering.
- "Held high above the fire"The instruction means lower the heat so a thick fillet cooks through without the crust burning. On a modern hob, drop from high to medium once the coating has set.
- Timing on the fishPlaice fillets are thin and cook in two to three minutes a side, then need only a minute or two in the sauce. Judge by the flesh turning opaque and flaking; overcooked plaice collapses into shreds.
- ServingFour to five as a fish course, two to three as a main. The sauce is poured around the fish rather than over it so the fried surface is not softened.
Plaice was one of the cheap, plentiful flatfish of the British coast, landed in quantity and priced accordingly the sixpence or eightpence a fish quoted here put it well below sole, which is why Cassell's gives it a good deal of space and dresses it up with wine, anchovy and oysters. That trio is often described as a typical Victorian upgrade for a plain fish: oysters were still a working-class staple in the mid-nineteenth century, sold by the barrel in London, and anchovy essence or salted anchovies did the savoury work now done by stock cubes and fish sauce. The combination of a fried fish finished in an oyster sauce belongs to a long English line running back through the eighteenth-century habit of stuffing and saucing everything from beefsteak to turkey with oysters, a habit that faded as the native beds were fished out and prices climbed toward the end of the century. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an enormous alphabetical compendium of the late Victorian period, was aimed at exactly the household that wanted a company dish out of a cheap fish.