Home › The Principles of Cookery › Red Mullet, Marinaded and Broiled
Red Mullet, Marinaded and Broiled
Prepare the mullet in the usual way. Rub each one with a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice and a tea-spoonful of salad-oil, and sprinkle a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg over it. Lay all the fish in a dish, sprinkle over them a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, and two shallots finely minced, and let them lie for three hours. Fold in buttered paper, and broil according to the directions given for RED MULLET (EN PAPILLOTE). Time to broil, twenty to twenty-five minutes.
A straightforward marinated fish, but two of its instructions mean something different now than they did when Cassell's was compiled: "broil" and the cooking time.
- Broil means grill over fireIn this book broiling is cooking over coals on a gridiron, not under an overhead element. A covered charcoal or gas grill over medium heat is the closest match; a 400F oven will also cook the parcels properly, though without the smoke.
- The timing is far too longTwenty to twenty-five minutes suits a large fish over a slow, uneven coal fire. A 6-8 oz red mullet in paper needs roughly 8-12 minutes, until the flesh at the backbone is just opaque; many cooks pull it at 130-140F, though standard food-safety guidance for fish is 145F. Held to the full twenty-five it will be dry and cottony.
- "Prepare in the usual way"For red mullet this traditionally meant scaling and trimming the fins but leaving the fish undrawn, the liver being considered the best part. Scaling is essential as the scales are large and loose. Gut it if you prefer; if you leave it whole, remove the gills at least.
- Buttered paperUse parchment, generously buttered, folded and crimped into a sealed parcel, or heavy foil lined with buttered parchment so the acid and oil do not sit directly on the metal. The seal matters more than the material: the fish steams in its own juices and the marinade.
- The marinadeThree hours is generous for a teaspoon of lemon juice per fish, but the quantity is small enough that the flesh will not go chalky. Keep the dish refrigerated for the whole three hours and turn the fish once so the parsley and shallot coat both sides.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use it lightly, a scant pinch per fish. Pre-ground nutmeg is flatter and it is easy to overwhelm a mullet, which has a delicate, faintly shellfish sweetness.
- Yield and servingOne fish per person for a main course. Serve the parcels unopened at the table so the perfumed steam is not lost, with lemon and plain boiled potatoes.
Red mullet was one of the most prized fish in Victorian kitchens, valued as much for its scarlet skin on the table as for its flavour, and Cassell's gives it a run of recipes rather than one. It was commonly called the woodcock of the sea, a nickname generally traced to the practice of cooking it undrawn so that the liver, considered a delicacy, cooked inside the fish, exactly as woodcock was roasted with its trail. The Romans were famously extravagant about mullet, paying enormous prices for large specimens. The technique here, oiled and herbed fish sealed in buttered paper, is the papillote method that French cookery lent to English kitchens in this period; it was practical as well as fashionable, since a thin-skinned fish over live coals dries and sticks, while paper keeps every drop of the marinade against the flesh.