Home › The Principles of Cookery › Turbot Fillets
Turbot Fillets
A small turbot may be used for this purpose, or if a turbot is larger than is required for immediate use, it may be cut into halves, one half may be filleted, and the other half dressed in a different way. Clean and dry the fish, and raise the flesh from the bones with a sharp knife. Take off the dark skin, but leave the white skin untouched. Divide the meat into neat pieces the size and shape of small cutlets, and either fry, stew, or bake them. To fry them, dip them into beaten egg and bread-crumbs, fry in hot fat till they are lightly browned, drain them, serve neatly arranged like cutlets on a folded napkin, and garnish with fried parsley. To bake them, put a pound of the filleted meat, arranged in a single layer, into a baking-dish with two ounces of sweet butter, a little pepper and salt, and the strained juice of a lemon. Put them in a brisk oven, baste well with the liquor, and bake until done enough. Dish them as before. To stew them, remove all the skin from the fish, dredge the fillets with some flour, and fry them till they are lightly browned. Put them into the stewpan, and pour over them as much nicely-seasoned stock as will cover them. Let them stew gently until done enough. Lift them out of the sauce with a fish-slicer, lay them on a hot dish, and keep them warm. Skim the gravy, thicken with a spoonful of brown thickening, add a spoonful of mushroom ketchup and a glassful of light wine, let it boil up, and strain it over the fish. Serve very hot. Time to fry the fillets, five or six minutes; to bake them, about twenty minutes; to stew them, ten to fifteen minutes.
A single method sheet for three treatments of one fish, written when turbot was a standard fishmonger's item rather than a special order. Most of the adjustment needed is in the timings and in a handful of Victorian store-cupboard items.
- Leave the white skin onThe instruction to remove only the dark skin is the hinge of the fried and baked versions; the pale skin on the underside is presumably left to help hold each cutlet together under the crumb coating. For the stewed version, where the fillets are floured and simmered in stock, the recipe does say to take all skin off.
- Sourcing the fishWild turbot is expensive and often sold whole to order; farmed turbot is widely available and behaves the same way. Brill, halibut and large plaice fillet and cut into cutlet-shaped pieces just as well, though halibut dries faster.
- "A brisk oven"Conventionally taken as somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). The high heat and the butter-and-lemon basting are meant to keep the surface from drying while the flesh sets.
- Baking timeTwenty minutes suits a thick shoulder cut off a large turbot. Portions an inch thick are done in 10-12 minutes at that heat, and turbot goes cottony once it passes the point where the flakes separate cleanly. Judge by the flesh at the thickest point rather than by the clock.
- Sweet butterUnsalted butter. Two ounces to a pound of fish is about 4 tablespoons, and it is the whole of the sauce for the baked version along with the lemon juice.
- Brown thickeningA Victorian standby: flour cooked in butter until nut-brown and kept in a jar, spooned into sauces as needed. A small quantity of well-browned roux made at the time is the closest substitute; a spoonful of beurre manie will thicken but will not supply the browned flavour.
- Mushroom ketchup and "a glassful of light wine"Mushroom ketchup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice extract, still sold and not interchangeable with tomato ketchup; a dash of soy or a splash of Worcestershire covers the same savoury register. A wineglass in this period is roughly 2 fl oz, so about a quarter cup of a dry white.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into the frying fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn brittle and vivid green. They burn quickly and any water on the leaves will spit.
- Serving and yieldThe folded napkin under the fried fillets was there to absorb fat; a warm plate does the job now. A pound of filleted meat, the quantity given for baking, serves two generously or three as part of a longer meal.
Turbot held an unusually high rank in nineteenth-century British and French cookery, valued for firm white flesh and a gelatinous quality that made it good hot or cold, and grand houses kept diamond-shaped turbot kettles for poaching a whole fish flat. What Cassell's gives here is one preparation with three finishes, showing a cook how to get more than one meal out of an expensive fish by filleting half and dressing the rest another way. The economy is real and characteristic of the book, which was written for households running a modest kitchen with genteel expectations. The stewed version, with its brown thickening, mushroom ketchup and glass of wine, is a fish dish treated like a meat dish, in contrast to the lighter butter and lemon handling of the kind the baked version already shows.