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Skate, with Liver Sauce
Boil the skate, as in recipe SKATE, WITH BLACK BUTTER SAUCE. Skim it, serve on a hot dish without a napkin, and pour over it a sauce prepared as follows. Boil the liver of the skate for five minutes, drain it, and bruise it in a mortar. Moisten with a little of the liquor, and rub it through a sieve. Dissolve a slice of fresh batter in a saucepan over a brisk fire, and stir into it three or four mushrooms chopped small, a small bunch of parsley picked and finely shredded, and a clove of garlic minced (the latter may be omitted, and a shallot or a small onion substituted for it). Dredge a table-spoonful of flour over these ingredients, and add the prepared liver, the flesh of an anchovy, a table-spoonful of bruised capers, and half a pint of stock made from bones. Stir the sauce over the fire for a few minutes, add a little more thickening if necessary, and pour it upon the fish. Time altogether, three-quarters of an hour.
A Victorian sauce built on the skate's own liver, which is rich, soft and closer to foie gras than to fish. The whole dish stands or falls on getting that liver, so the fish must be bought whole or the liver ordered separately.
- The liver is the hingeSkate liver is discarded by most fishmongers before the wings are cut, so it has to be requested in advance or the fish bought whole. Without it this is simply a caper and anchovy sauce; nothing else gives the same soft, faintly sweet richness.
- "A slice of fresh batter"A printer's error for butter. "A slice" is imprecise in cookery books of this kind; something in the region of 1 to 2 oz (30-60 g) will soften the mushrooms and carry a tablespoon of flour.
- Half a pint of stockImperial measure, so 10 fl oz or about 300 ml. A light fish or veal stock suits it; the book's "stock made from bones" means whatever bone broth the kitchen had standing.
- The anchovyA salt-packed anchovy, rinsed and boned, or two oil-packed fillets. It is there for savour rather than fishiness, and the sauce should not need extra salt until the capers and anchovy have gone in.
- Cooking the wingSkate for black butter was generally poached in salted, acidulated water. A large wing takes 10-15 minutes at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, which shreds the fibres away from the cartilage. The three-quarters of an hour given is for the whole operation, sauce included.
- Ammonia smellSkate holds urea in its flesh, which turns to ammonia as it ages. A faint whiff on a very fresh wing cooks off; a strong one means the fish is past use. Soaking briefly in acidulated water before cooking helps.
- "Without a napkin"Boiled fish was often sent to table on a folded napkin to absorb water. Here the sauce is poured over, so the napkin is omitted. Drain the wing well on a cloth first instead, or the sauce will thin on the dish.
- SourcingCommon skate (Dipturus batis) is now critically endangered and landings are prohibited in much of Europe. What is sold as skate today is generally thornback or another ray; buy from a fishmonger who can name the species.
- YieldA wing of about 1.5 lb (700 g) with this quantity of sauce serves two generously, three at a table with other courses.
Skate with liver sauce belongs to the same French-influenced repertoire as the better-known raie au beurre noir, and the book's cross-reference to the black butter version makes the pairing explicit. Victorian cooks treated skate as a cheap fish redeemed by its sauce: the wings were plentiful, the flesh sweet and easy to lift off the cartilage, and the liver, which most modern handlers throw away, was prized enough to build a sauce around. The anchovy, capers and mushroom in that sauce are a very Victorian trio, all pantry items with long keeping qualities, and the optional garlic, hedged immediately with a shallot substitute, shows how far garlic still sat outside mainstream English cooking even in a book that borrowed freely from French practice.