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Red Mullet, Stuffed
Scrape and wash the fish, and wipe them carefully. Make a little forcemeat with hard-boiled yolks of eggs, chopped parsley, butter, pepper and salt, and a spoonful of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Fill the mullet with this stuffing, wrap the fish in buttered paper, and broil over a gentle fire. When done enough, remove the paper, and serve the fish on a hot dish with a little melted maitre d'hotel butter under them, or failing this, with maitre d'hotel sauce in a tureen. Time to broil, twenty to thirty minutes.
A gridiron recipe that translates cleanly to a covered grill or a hot oven, provided the timing is cut back sharply. The paper wrapper is the whole method: it holds the butter and stuffing in and keeps the delicate skin from sticking and tearing.
- "Broil" means grill over coalsIn this book broiling is done on a gridiron over a fire, with the heat below. Under a modern overhead broiler the buttered paper will scorch before the fish is done. Use a covered grill over medium coals, or bake the parcels at 400F.
- Cut the timeTwenty to thirty minutes suits a slow, uneven coal fire. Over modern heat a red mullet of 8-10 oz needs about 12-15 minutes in paper; it is done when the flesh at the backbone has just turned opaque and pulls from the bone.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered generously on the side touching the fish, is the direct equivalent. Fold and crimp the edges so butter cannot escape; foil works but gives you steam rather than the faint toasting the paper contributes.
- The forcemeatNo quantities are given. For two fish, two hard-boiled yolks mashed with about 1 oz softened butter, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a tablespoon of fine dry crumbs, salt and pepper gives a stuffing stiff enough to stay put. "A spoonful" here is a rounded tablespoon at most; more crumbs and it goes pasty.
- Scaling and gutting"Scrape and wash" is scaling. Red mullet scales lift easily but fly everywhere, so work in a sink or a bag. Period recipes often leave red mullet ungutted, the liver counted a delicacy; if you want that, have the fishmonger gut through the gills, or remove only the intestine.
- Maitre d'hotel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled. "Melted" here means softened to a pouring cream over gentle heat, not boiled and separated. The sauce version, which the recipe does not specify, is usually the same seasoning worked into a light butter or white sauce.
- Buying the fishTrue red mullet (Mullus surmuletus or barbatus) is a Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic fish, related to the goatfishes sold under that name in the US. Striped or black mullet, common in American markets, is a different, oilier fish and will not taste the same, though it takes the same treatment.
- YieldOne fish per person as a course, two of the small Mediterranean size. Serve the parcels opened at the table if you like; the aroma is the point of the method.
Red mullet was among the most prized fish of the Victorian table, and the reason is partly Roman inheritance: classical writers made mullus a byword for luxury, and nineteenth-century cookery writers repeated the association enthusiastically. The fish was often called the woodcock of the sea, because like woodcock it was traditionally cooked ungutted, the liver counted as the best part. Cooking it in buttered paper -- a handling akin to the French en papillote -- was a common English treatment by the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary, recommended because red mullet has thin skin, and a soft, easily broken flesh that suffers on bare bars. The stuffing of hard yolk, parsley, butter and crumbs is a plain domestic forcemeat of the kind that appears throughout the book whenever a fish or bird needed padding out, and maitre d'hotel butter was a very common accompaniment to grilled fish or steak in the Anglo-French repertoire of the period.