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TURBOT (a la Bechamel)
This is a favourite method of dressing the remains of boiled turbot. Remove the flesh from the bones while it is still warm if possible, divide it into convenient-sized pieces, and take away all the skin. Put a pint of milk or cream, or equal parts of either milk and white stock or milk and cream, into a stewpan with a strip of thin lemon-rind, a finely-minced shallet, six peppercorns, and half a tea-spoonful of salt. Let it boil for ten minutes, then strain and thicken it with a large table-spoonful of flour mixed smoothly with a little cream or butter. Stir the sauce over a gentle fire for five minutes, put in the slices of fish, and when they are quite hot turn the whole preparation upon a hot dish. A few oysters may be added to the sauce if liked, and if milk only is used, the sauce may be made richer by adding the yolks of two eggs mixed with a little cream. If this is done, care must be taken not to let the sauce boil after the eggs are added. Garnish the dish with sliced lemon and parsley, or with potato croquettes or toasted sippets. Time, three or four minutes to heat the fish in the sauce. Sufficient, a pound of cold turbot and one-third of a pint of sauce for two persons. TURBOT (a la Creme). Take the flesh from the remains of a boiled turbot, free it from bones and skin, and divide it into neat pieces, season with a little salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, pour on it the strained juice of a lemon, and let it lie for an hour. Simmer half a pint of new milk with a strip of lemon-rind and a bay-leaf till it is pleasantly flavoured. Strain it over the fish, and let it heat gently. Beat the yolks of two eggs, and mix them smoothly with a table-spoonful of flour and half a pint of thick cream. Stir this carefully into the sauce, let it get quite hot, but on no account allow it to boil. Serve immediately. Time, a few minutes to heat the fish in the sauce. Sufficient, a pound of fish for one or two persons.
Two related ways of reheating cold boiled turbot in an enriched white sauce. Both hinge on the same point: the sauce carries the heat, and it must never boil once eggs are in it.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksEgg yolks stirred into a hot sauce set into curds above roughly 180F/82C. Keep the pan on a low flame, stir constantly, and pull it off as soon as the sauce thickens and coats the spoon.
- ShalletAn older spelling of shallot. One small shallot, finely minced, is what is meant; it is strained out with the peppercorns and lemon rind before the sauce is thickened.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread toasted or fried in butter, arranged round the edge of the dish. They are a garnish, not a base.
- Sauce proportionsA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz / 570 ml, not the US 16 oz. One large tablespoon of flour to a pint of liquid gives a fairly thin pouring sauce, which is what is wanted; the yolks and cream do the rest of the thickening.
- Turbot and substitutesWild turbot is expensive and often scarce; farmed turbot, brill, halibut or any firm white flatfish behaves the same way. The method exists for fish already cooked, so start from poached fillets if you have no leftovers.
- Reheating cooked fish safelyCold cooked fish should have been refrigerated promptly and used within a day or two, and should be brought right through to steaming hot in the sauce. Three or four minutes is enough for thin flakes; thicker pieces need longer.
- The oystersIf you add them, put them in at the very end and give them a minute at most. Oysters held in hot sauce for more than a couple of minutes shrink and turn rubbery.
- The lemon soak in the Creme versionAn hour in lemon juice firms and slightly bleaches already-cooked flesh and cuts the richness of the cream. Drain off any pooled juice before adding the infused milk, or the acid plus heat will encourage the sauce to split.
- YieldThe Bechamel version gives a pound of fish and one-third of a pint of sauce for two; the a la Creme version says a pound for one or two. Either way, a light lunch or a fish course rather than a main plate.
Turbot was the grand fish of the Victorian dinner table, poached whole in a diamond-shaped turbot kettle and sent up under lobster or oyster sauce, and a large one was expensive enough that no cook was going to throw away what came back from the dining room. Hence pages like this one: Cassell's, like Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton before it, devotes real space to the second appearance of a dish, and béchamel — the flour-thickened milk sauce generally traced to seventeenth-century French court cookery and named for Louis XIV's steward Louis de Béchameil — was the standard vehicle for it. The liaison of egg yolks and cream in the à la crème version is the older, pre-roux way of binding a sauce, and its survival alongside the flour here shows a kitchen using both French technique and English thrift at once.