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Trout, Broiled
Choose some moderate-sized trout; empty, wash, and dry them, split each fish down the back, and, without injuring it, spread it open on a dish. Season with salt and cayenne, and a little lemon-juice, and brush them well all over with oil or clarified butter. Broil over a clear fire, turning and basting them with butter every now and then. Serve on a hot dish, and send parsley, mushroom, or piquant sauce to table in a tureen. Some cooks split the trout open, rub them all over with salt, let them lie two or three hours, then hang them up till wanted, or for eight or ten hours before broiling them. Time to broil, five minutes or more, according to size.
A clean, fast method that still works: the only real skills are butterflying the fish and managing the heat. Everything else is seasoning and sauce.
- The hinge: a clear fire"A clear fire" means coals burned down to a steady glow with no flame and no smoke — dripping oil over open flame will flare and coat the skin in soot. A gas grill on high with the lid open, or a ridged cast-iron pan, gives the same effect indoors.
- Splitting down the backCut along either side of the backbone from the head end and open the fish flat, kipper-style, leaving the belly skin intact. You can leave the bone in or lift it out; either way the fish cooks in one layer and needs turning only once.
- TimingThe book gives only "five minutes or more, according to size." Five minutes suits a small trout of roughly 8-10 oz, turned once; a larger fish will want longer. Cook to 145F at the thickest part, or until the flesh at the backbone just parts and turns opaque.
- Oil or clarified butterThe recipe allows either. Clarified butter (or ghee) avoids the milk solids that scorch at broiling heat, though the recipe happily bastes with plain butter later; a neutral high-smoke-point oil does the job with less flavour.
- Cayenne, not pepperCayenne appears constantly in Victorian savoury cookery as a sharpener used in tiny amounts: a scant pinch per fish, not a teaspoon. Use a light hand either way, as ground spice over direct heat catches easily.
- The salting variantThe salt-and-hang treatment is a brief dry cure that firms the flesh and dries the surface for better colour. Do it in the refrigerator, uncovered on a rack, rather than in a warm kitchen or a larder, and rinse and dry the fish before oiling it.
- The saucesPiquant sauce is generally a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar, shallot and gherkin; parsley sauce is a butter-and-flour white sauce. Neither is obligatory -- melted butter with lemon and chopped parsley suits grilled trout better than anything thickened.
- YieldOne trout of 8-12 oz per person. A hot dish matters more than the book lets on: grilled fish goes cold and slack fast, so warm the plates.
Trout was a favoured freshwater fish of the sporting classes, and Cassell's treats it accordingly -- split, grilled over embers and sent to table with a made sauce in a tureen, the way a fish caught that morning might be dealt with at a country house or a fishing inn. The split-and-broil method is much older than the book and belongs to the same family as the grilled herring and the split kipper: opening a small fish flat lets the heat reach the bone in minutes, and the dry-salt-and-hang step described at the end applies the same logic for firming and colour. The instruction to broil "over a clear fire" for "five minutes or more, according to size" assumes a reader who judges the fire by eye rather than by a clock.