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ROES, HERRING, IN CASES (M. Ude's way)
Have a paper case, either round or square-its size must be suited to the dish you are going to use--spread some butter over the bottom. Broil eight very fresh soft-roed herrings, and when well done take out the roes, and put them, without breaking, into the case. Sprinkle over them a little pepper, salt, rasped bread, and finely-chopped parsley; put a few small bits of butter over them in different places, and bake them in a hot oven. When they are done, put a little maitre d'hotel sauce into the case, with the juice of a lemon. Send up quite hot, and very firm. This dish can never be properly prepared if you wash the herrings: scale them very well, and wipe them first with a damp cloth, and afterwards with a dry one, then broil them sharply, so as to keep the soft roe very firm. The case should be made of strong foolscap paper.
A Victorian savoury built on soft herring roes, borrowed from the French chef Louis Eustache Ude. The technique is sound but two of its terms will trip up a modern cook: the paper case and the "soft roe" itself.
- Soft roe means miltA soft roe is the male herring's milt, not eggs — creamy, pale and fragile, quite different from the granular hard roe. Fishmongers sell them bagged and frozen in many places; eight herrings yield a modest amount, enough for two to four people as a savoury or light first course.
- The paper caseFoolscap was a stiff writing paper, a full sheet roughly 13½ x 17 inches, folded and pleated into a shallow open box and buttered so it would not scorch. Parchment paper or a small heatproof gratin dish does the same job; the recipe only calls for butter on the bottom, but if you build a paper case it is safer to butter it inside and out and set it on a baking sheet.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "hot oven" in period usage corresponds roughly to 425-450F. The roes are already cooked at this point, so the oven is only there to crisp the crumbs and colour the butter — a few minutes, not a bake.
- Rasped breadDry bread grated on a rasp: fine, pale, thoroughly dried crumbs, not fresh soft ones and not the orange packaged kind. Crumb a day-old loaf and dry it in a low oven.
- Maître d'hôtel sauceMaitre d'hotel sauce -- In Ude's period this usually means butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, softened and spooned over, though some period books give a cooked sauce of the same name. Since the recipe adds lemon separately, keep the butter itself simple.
- Do not wash the fishThis is the hinge, and the recipe says so. Water waterlogs the milt and it collapses to paste under heat. Scale, wipe with a damp cloth, wipe dry, then broil hard and fast so the roes set firm before they can slacken.
- Broiling the herringsBroil hard and fast under a hot grill until well done, as the recipe directs; the herrings are essentially a vessel here, and the flesh can be eaten separately. Lift the roes out whole with a spoon rather than fingers.
- Serve immediately"Send up quite hot, and very firm" is a serving instruction with teeth — soft roes go flabby and leak butter within minutes of leaving the oven.
Louis Eustache Ude was among the most quoted French chefs working in England in the early nineteenth century, cook to Lord Sefton and later to the gambling club Crockford's, and author of The French Cook (1813), which ran through many editions and was still being lifted from by compilers decades after his death. Recipes credited to "M. Ude" in late-Victorian dictionaries are often condensed from that book, which explains the brisk, instructional tone here and the insistence on the paper case — cooking en papillote and in caisses was a French professional habit that English kitchens adopted piecemeal. Soft herring roes on toast or in cases belonged to the savoury, the small hot dish served after the sweet at a formal English dinner, a course that had no real French equivalent; herring milt was cheap, arrived with the great autumn catches, and lent itself to exactly this kind of rich, salty, lemon-sharpened treatment.