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TROUT, BOILED, PLAIN (M. Ude's way)
After having emptied, scaled, and washed the fish, have some boiling water ready, into which put the trout with a good handful of salt only, but no vinegar, as it spoils the colour of the fish. When it is done, drain it well, and serve it up on a clean cloth garnished with parsley. Send up lobster sauce separately in a boat, or Dutch sauce. The length of time it should boil is left to the judgment of the cook; the size determines the time. But keep in mind that when the fish remains long in the water it loses its flavour and quality; for this reason take care to boil it precisely at the time it is wanted.
A bare-bones poaching method that assumes the cook already knows what a cooked trout looks like. The two things worth pinning down are the water temperature and the timing Ude declines to give.
- Do not actually boil itUde says boiling water, but bring it to the boil and then drop the heat so it barely shivers before the fish goes in: a hard rolling boil splits the skin and shreds the flesh. The gentle poach is a modern refinement on the instruction as written.
- The timing he leaves to youA whole trout of 10-12 oz needs roughly 8-10 minutes at a bare simmer; reckon about 8 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder. It is done when the flesh at the backbone has just turned opaque and the dorsal fin pulls free with no resistance.
- How much salt"A good handful" is a generous quantity, on the order of 2-3 tablespoons or more per gallon of water: enough to season the flesh lightly without curing it. Ude's ban on vinegar is about appearance rather than flavour -- he says only that it "spoils the colour of the fish".
- The clean clothVictorian tables set boiled fish on a folded damask napkin laid over the platter, which absorbs the water that continues to weep from the fish. A folded linen tea towel does the same job; drain the trout on it for a minute before it goes to table.
- Dutch sauceIn Cassell's this is the egg-yolk-and-butter emulsion now called hollandaise, usually sharpened with lemon or a little vinegar. Lobster sauce is a bechamel or melted-butter sauce with chopped lobster meat and, in the period, coral for colour.
- Timing to the tableHis closing warning is the real instruction: poached fish held in its water goes woolly and washed out within minutes. Start it once the sauce is made and the plates are hot.
- YieldOne trout of about 12 oz per person as a course; a single large trout of 2-3 lb will serve four, and needs closer to 20 minutes.
Louis Eustache Ude was among the most quoted French chefs working in England in the first half of the nineteenth century: cook to the Earl of Sefton, later to Crockford's club in St James's, and author of The French Cook (1813), a book that ran through many editions and was still being lifted from decades after his death. Cassell's, compiled at the end of the century, routinely attributes methods to earlier authorities in this way, and the entry preserves Ude's characteristic manner - a refusal to give a cooking time, which the recipe leaves "to the judgment of the cook".