Home › The Principles of Cookery › Tench, Broiled, with Fine Herbs
Tench, Broiled, with Fine Herbs
Wash, clean, and draw three or four tench, and lay them in boiling water for three minutes; then scale them carefully from head to tail. Lay them on a dish, and sprinkle over them a little pepper and salt, an onion, a finely-minced shallot, a table-spoonful of parsley chopped small, and a pinch of powdered thyme. Pour over the fish as much oil as will cover them, and let them lie for an hour or two. Wrap each fish separately with the herbs, etc., in two thicknesses of writing-paper which has been dipped in the oil in which the fish was placed, and broil over a clear fire. When they are done enough, take off the paper, and serve on a hot dish, pouring piquant sauce over them. Time to broil, five to ten minutes, according to size.
A paper-wrapped grilled fish, in the manner the French call en papillote, from a period when "broil" meant over a fire rather than under a gas element. Two details in the original need translating before you start.
- Not writing paperVictorian writing paper was generally ungummed rag or wood-pulp stock, and oiled paper was a common wrapper for grilled fish. Modern paper carries optical brighteners, coatings and inks; use two sheets of baking parchment brushed with the marinade oil instead.
- The scalding is the hingeTench scales are small, deeply set and notoriously hard to shift. The three minutes in boiling water loosens them so they come away with the back of a knife from head to tail. Skip it and you will spend twenty minutes fighting the fish.
- Finding the fishTench is rarely sold commercially in Britain or the US and in some waters is a coarse fish that may not be legally taken and sold. Small whole bream, crappie, perch or trout of about 3/4 lb each behave the same way in paper.
- "An onion"The quantity is given without preparation. Read it as one small onion, minced as finely as the shallot, so it softens in the short broiling time rather than staying raw and crunchy.
- Oil to coverThe original wants enough oil to cover the fish, so the amount depends entirely on the dish; for three or four small fish expect a cup or more of olive oil. The oil is a marinade and a wrapper glue, not a cooking medium, and most of it stays behind.
- Marinate coldAn hour or two at room temperature was normal in an unheated Victorian larder. Refrigerate, and allow the fish to sit out 15 minutes before it goes on the grill so the paper does not steam unevenly.
- Heat and timing"A clear fire" means coals burned down past the flame stage, with no smoke, at a medium-high grilling heat. Five to ten minutes total, turning once; the paper should scorch brown at the edges but not flare. The fish is done when the flesh at the backbone parts cleanly.
- Piquant sauceA sauce piquante of this period is generally a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar and shallot, often with chopped gherkin or capers. Anything sharp and salty answers the same purpose here, since the point is to cut the muddy sweetness of a freshwater fish.
- YieldThree or four fish of this size serve three or four as a first course, or two as a main with potatoes.
Tench (Tinca tinca) is a thick-bodied member of the carp family, olive-green and heavily slimed, long known in England as the "doctor fish" from an old and unfounded belief that other fish rubbed against it to heal their wounds. It was a stew-pond fish rather than a market fish: monastic and manorial ponds kept tench and carp because both survive crowding and low oxygen, and both were available in Lent. Its reputation for muddy flesh is why so many nineteenth-century recipes bury it in strong seasoning, and why this one pairs it with shallot, thyme and a vinegar-sharpened sauce. Cooking in oiled paper over coals is often said to be the older, plainer ancestor of the restaurant papillote; the wrapper holds the herbs against the skin and keeps a lean freshwater fish from drying on the grill. That Cassell's includes tench at all reflects a book written when a good deal of British fish still came from inland water and the household's own supplier rather than the sea.