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Skate, Boiled
Let the skate hang a couple of days, then skin it, and cut it into pieces about four inches square--some cut out of the thick part, and some out of the thin. Tie the pieces with string to preserve the shape, and put first the thick pieces, and a couple of minutes afterwards the thin pieces, into a fish-kettle with boiling water which has been prepared for the fish by the addition of a handful of salt, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and a sliced onion, to a gallon of water. Boil the fish gently until done enough. The time required will depend upon the thickness. The liver, which is highly prized, should be boiled separately, and served at the side, or finely chopped and mixed with parsley and butter. Good melted butter flavoured with lemon-juice, caper sauce, shrimp sauce, or anchovy sauce, may all be served with skate, or there may be a sauce prepared as follows. Dissolve four ounces of butter in a small sauce-pan, and stir in with it a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley and a table-spoonful of vinegar. Simmer three minutes, and serve. Time to boil the skate, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d. per pound.
A Victorian court-bouillon poach, sound in principle but written for a fish that was handled very differently from the way it is sold now. Two things need attention: the ageing, and the cooking time.
- The hanging, and the smell testSkate is one of the few fish usually given a day or two before cooking; very fresh skate is tough, and a short rest lets the flesh relax. Do that ageing in the refrigerator, not hung in a larder, and reject any wing that smells strongly of ammonia rather than faintly of the sea: it is past use, and no amount of vinegar in the water will fix it.
- Buy it skinnedFishmongers now sell skate as prepared wings, usually skinned or easily skinned after poaching. The book assumes a whole fish delivered with skin and liver attached, which is no longer how it reaches a domestic kitchen.
- SpeciesCommon skate (Dipturus batis) is now critically endangered and protected in UK and EU waters. What is sold today as "skate" is generally thornback ray or a related ray, which is what this method should be applied to.
- Fifteen to twenty minutes is too longThat figure suits a thick centre cut from a very large fish. A typical 1 in / 2.5 cm wing portion is done in 8-12 minutes at a bare shiver, when the flesh combs away from the cartilage in strands. Boiled hard, skate shreds and turns woolly.
- The poaching liquorA handful of salt, 2 tbsp vinegar and a sliced onion to a gallon works out at roughly 1 tbsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp vinegar and a quarter onion per litre. The acid firms the flesh and suppresses any residual ammonia.
- No fish kettle neededA wide sauté pan with a lid holds two wings flat in a couple of inches of liquor. Slide them in on a spatula rather than tying them with string; string is only useful for irregular chunks cut from a very thick fish.
- "Melted butter" is not melted butterIn this book melted butter means the standard flour-and-butter white sauce thinned with water or fish liquor. The sauce given at the end of the recipe -- butter, parsley, vinegar, simmered three minutes -- is a different thing, and is a simpler relative of the butter-and-vinegar sauces served with skate in France.
- The liverPrized in the book's day, essentially unobtainable now unless you buy a whole fish direct from a boat. Skip it; the dish does not depend on it.
- Yield and costAllow 200-250 g of trimmed wing per person. The "4d. to 6d. per pound" marks skate as one of the cheapest fish on the slab at the time it is no longer priced that way.
Skate was through much of the nineteenth century a cheap fish in Britain, plentiful on the London stalls and associated with cheap fried fish rather than with dinner tables, which may explain the range of caper, shrimp and anchovy sauces offered here. The instruction to let it hang is not carelessness: the flesh of skates and rays carries urea as an osmotic regulator, and a short rest lets the muscle relax and the flavour settle -- a rest fishmongers still give it, though in a chilled room. The livers, rich and soft, were reckoned a delicacy in both British and French kitchens, and the buttery vinegar sauce at the end of the entry is a plain domestic cousin of the French raie au beurre noir, long established as a partner for the fish.