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Sturgeon, Stewed, and Garnished with Sole
Take a piece of sturgeon cut from the middle of a good-sized fish. Clean and scale it, and soak it in salt and water for ten or twelve hours. Drain, and cover it with thin slices of fat bacon. Put it into the fish-kettle, and almost cover it with nicely-flavoured stock. Add a glassful of claret, and simmer it gently until done enough. Fillet five or six soles. Spread a thin layer of fish forcemeat on the skinned side of each fillet, roll it, tie twine round it, and put the fillets side by side in a buttered baking-dish. Pour round them as much stock as will almost cover them, and bake them in a moderate oven. When the sturgeon is done, drain it, place it on a hot dish, put the rolled fillets of sole round it, and pour over them a small portion of the liquor, strained and thickened, in which the sturgeon was boiled. A small stewed mushroom may be placed on each roll. If preferred, the soles may be omitted altogether, and the sturgeon, being cooked as above, may be served on a hot dish, and simply garnished with parsley and cut lemon. Caper sauce and plainly-boiled potatoes may then be served as accompaniments.
A late-Victorian dressed fish course built on two textures: a dense, meaty middle cut of sturgeon and delicate rolled sole around it. Most of the work is in sourcing and in not overcooking the sturgeon.
- Sourcing the sturgeonAll sturgeon are listed under CITES and international trade in wild sturgeon and its products is tightly restricted; what is on sale today is overwhelmingly farmed white or Siberian sturgeon, sold as steaks and loin cuts, and that is what this recipe now means in practice. A centre-cut piece of 3-4 lb will serve six to eight.
- The long soakTen or twelve hours in salt and water was a larder practice in an unrefrigerated kitchen. Do it in the refrigerator, in a covered container, or reduce it to two or three hours in a 5 per cent brine, which is all the seasoning effect you actually need.
- Fat baconIn this period this meant the fat of cured bacon, commonly the unsmoked 'green' sort rather than modern smoked breakfast bacon, whose flavour will dominate. Thin sheets of fatback or blanched salt pork are a close equivalent; barded this way the sturgeon does not dry out.
- Fish-kettle and stockAny deep pan or roasting tin long enough to hold the piece will do; the fish needs only to be almost covered, so a snug vessel saves stock. 'Nicely-flavoured stock' is not specified here; a light fish or vegetable stock will serve.
- A glassful of claretA wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a quarter-cup or so of dry red Bordeaux-style wine. Red with fish is not an error here -- sturgeon is firm and meaty and takes it well.
- Cooking the sturgeonThis is the hinge. Sturgeon behaves more like veal than like flaky fish, and it goes dry and cottony if pushed. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble; cooks often pull sturgeon at an internal 130-135F, though standard food-safety guidance for fish is 145F. Reckon roughly 10 to 12 minutes per inch of thickness; rest it while you finish the sole.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate oven' is conventionally read as around 350F. Stuffed, rolled fillets will want somewhere in the region of 12 to 20 minutes depending on thickness, with the stock around them barely bubbling.
- Forcemeat and tying'fish forcemeat' of this period might be a bread-and-butter panada forcemeat bound with egg, or a mousseline of raw white fish with egg white and cream. Spread it thinly and roll from the tail end. The recipe ties each roll with twine; packed snugly side by side and stood upright, they will often hold without it.
- The sauceStrain the poaching liquor, reduce it hard, then thicken with beurre manié or a little arrowroot. Reducing first is what turns cooking liquid into a sauce worth pouring.
Sturgeon in a British cookery book of this period carried an air of ceremony: by long tradition, traced to the medieval statute usually cited as De Prerogativa Regis, sturgeon taken in English waters were a royal fish belonging to the Crown, and a captured one was often offered formally to the sovereign. Practically speaking, Victorian kitchens met sturgeon rather more often than that suggests -- imported salted and fresh fish from the Baltic, the Elbe and North America reached British markets, and cookbooks frequently compared its firm, pale, almost meaty flesh to veal. That is exactly the logic of this dish: the sturgeon is barded with pork fat, braised in stock and red wine and served with a thickened gravy, all techniques borrowed from butcher's meat, while the rolled sole and mushrooms supply the fine garnish expected of a dressed fish course. Within a few decades of Cassell's the picture changed completely; overfishing and caviar demand collapsed sturgeon populations, and the fish that once had to be offered to a king is now almost entirely a farmed product.