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Red Mullet, Baked
Scrape a good-sized mullet lightly, pull out the gills, and with them the thread-like gut. Be careful not to injure the liver. Rub the mullet with lemon-juice, and put it into a shallow dish with a chopped mushroom, a shallot chopped small, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, two or three small slices of carrot, a little pepper and salt, and a wine-glassful of light wine. Put the dish in a gentle oven, and bake the mullet until done enough, basting at intervals with butter or salad-oil. Serve on a hot dish, with the sauce from the pan poured over the fish. It will require baking from twenty to thirty minutes. Or, prepare, wash, and dry three mullets. Put them in a shallow dish, and sprinkle over them a moderate-sized onion chopped small, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a little pepper and salt. Pour a little salad oil or oiled butter over them, and let them bake gently until done enough. Put into a saucepan a tea-spoonful of salad-oil and a dessert-spoonful of chopped onion. Stir these ingredients over the fire until the onions are tender, dredge a little flour over them, add the liquor from the fish, a little chopped parsley, and a glassful of wine. Stir the sauce over the fire until it is so thick that it coats the spoon, and add, if liked, a little cream, and the juice of half a lemon. Serve the fish on a hot dish, with the sauce poured over it. Time to bake from twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost of mullet, from 6d. to 3s. each.
A straightforward baked whole fish with a pan-juice sauce; the Victorian instructions assume you know your fish and your oven. Two things need translating: the vessel-and-temperature language, and the timings.
- The liver stays inRed mullet is the classic "woodcock of the sea" — it is drawn through the gills so the liver remains inside, and the liver is the point. It melts into the pan juices and gives the sauce its character. If you cannot gut through the gills, ask the fishmonger to do it and keep the liver.
- A gentle ovenRead this as a slow-to-moderate oven, somewhere in the region of 300-350F; Victorian oven terms were not standardised. Anything hotter dries a lean fish like mullet before the aromatics have given anything up.
- TimingsTwenty to thirty minutes suits a fish of a pound or more. Modern red mullet run 6–10 oz apiece and will be done in 12–18 minutes at 350F — the flesh should just part from the backbone, or 130–140F at the thickest point. The second version, with three small fish, is especially prone to overcooking at the stated time.
- Wine-glassfulAbout 2 fl oz (a quarter cup) in Victorian usage. "Light wine" means a dry white — nothing oaked or sweet.
- Salad-oilUsually olive oil in this period. "Oiled butter" is butter melted until it runs oily.
- Spoon sizesA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons; the tablespoon of parsley is roughly the modern one. The flour dredged over the softened onion is perhaps a teaspoon -- enough to bind the pan liquor and a glass of wine into something that coats the spoon.
- Shallow dishUse a gratin dish or small roasting tin that holds the fish snugly. Too large a dish and the small quantity of wine evaporates before it can baste anything.
- SubstitutionsRed mullet (Mullus surmuletus or M. barbatus, sold as rouget) is not the American grey mullet and is worth seeking out. Failing that, small sea bream, porgy or snapper take the same treatment — but remove the liver from those and accept a plainer sauce.
- YieldOne good-sized fish serves two; the three-mullet version serves three. Serve with bread or plain boiled potatoes, since the sauce is the whole of the accompaniment.
Red mullet held an odd rank in Victorian kitchens: expensive, faintly exotic, and cooked with a reverence borrowed from the French. The habit of leaving the entrails in is often said to have earned it the English nickname "sea woodcock," by analogy with the game bird traditionally roasted undrawn on toast — the liver being counted the best part of both. The price note, from sixpence to three shillings apiece, shows just how wide the range was: a small Cornish fish off the summer boats against a large one at a West End fishmonger in season. Of the two methods given here, the first is elaborately garnished, with mushroom, shallot, carrot and wine; the second is finished with a flour-thickened, cream-enriched sauce in the Anglo-French manner then expected of a dinner-party fish course. Romans prized the same species extravagantly.