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Turbot and Lobster Sauce
Choose a very white and fine-skinned turbot three-quarters of an hour before dinner, or an hour if the fish is very large, put it, with lemon slices over it, into boiling salted water; start it very quick; when it begins to boil, draw the pan to the side of the fire. If the turbot boils too fast, it will be woolly. When you have ascertained with your knife that it is quite done, serve with green parsley on the broken places, and put round the dish some horse-radish scraped fine; serve lobster sauce separately in a boat. Make an aperture in the back of the turbot, and it will be the sooner done.
A Victorian dinner-party fish, written for a coal range and a diamond-shaped turbot kettle. The method is sound; the timing belongs to a much larger fish than most people cook now.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: don't let it boil hard — "Start it very quick" means bring the water up fast, then "draw the pan to the side of the fire" to hold it at a bare tremble. The recipe lets the water reach boiling before it is drawn aside; what it warns against is boiling too fast, which gives exactly the woolly texture it describes, with the flakes splitting and the gelatinous skin shredding.
- Timing is for a whole large fishThree-quarters of an hour, or the hour the recipe allows for a very large one, is for a whole turbot, not a fillet. Reckon instead on about 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder from the point the water returns to a simmer; a 2-inch fillet or steak wants 10-12 minutes, and the flesh should just part from the bone at the thickest point.
- Buying turbot nowWild North Atlantic turbot is scarce and expensive; farmed turbot is available but usually as small fish and fillets. Brill and halibut poach the same way, and brill in particular was a recognised stand-in for turbot in period cookery.
- The aperture in the backA shallow slit cut along the spine on the dark side lets heat reach the thick shoulder meat, which is what the recipe means by "the sooner done". Cut through skin and into the flesh to the bone, no further.
- The poaching liquidSalt the water properly; about 1 tablespoon per quart is a reasonable modern measure. The lemon slices do double duty, seasoning the flesh and helping keep it white; some period cookery books suggest a little milk in the water for the same reason. No wine or aromatics here; the sauce carries the flavour.
- White side up, and lifting it outPoach the fish white side up so the presentation surface is not marked by the rack. A whole turbot is fragile once cooked: use a rack or a doubled cloth sling under it, drain thoroughly, and blot the dish before serving or the sauce will thin out.
- Garnish and sauce"Green parsley on the broken places" is a repair job: sprigs laid over any torn skin. Scraped horseradish means fresh root shaved into fine shreds, not the jarred creamed sort. The lobster sauce goes to table separately in a sauceboat; period versions are generally a white or fish sauce with lobster meat, coral for colour, and a little cayenne.
- YieldA whole 4-5 lb turbot serves four to six as a main course, more as one course of a longer dinner.
Turbot was the grandest fish on a nineteenth-century English table, valued for its firm white flesh and its size. Roman writers were already treating a large turbot as a luxury worth satirising — Juvenal built a whole poem around one presented to the emperor — and by the Victorian period the fish justified a specialist pan, the broad diamond-shaped turbot kettle, which existed for no other purpose. Lobster sauce was a frequent partner, a way of getting two expensive shellfish and flatfish luxuries onto one dish. The instruction to hide the broken places under parsley suggests that gentle poaching of a large, delicate fish was a test of a cook's judgement.