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Turbot, Pickled
Take the remains of a cooked turbot; lift the flesh from the bones in large pieces, and put these in a deep dish. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan with a pint of water, and add an onion stuck with two cloves, a small turnip and carrot, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a bay-leaf. Simmer these gently for half an hour, then add a glassful of sherry, or, if preferred, a quarter of a pint of vinegar. Let the liquor cool, and strain it over the fish. Serve quite cold. Time to boil the pickle, half an hour.
A Victorian way of using up leftover boiled turbot, closer to a soused fish than a true pickle. The important thing to understand is that this keeps for days, not weeks.
- Not a preserveThe acid here is far too dilute, and the liquor too rich in fish stock, to hold anything safely at room temperature. Treat it as a cold dish: cover, refrigerate, and eat within two days.
- QuantitiesA pint in an English book of this period is 20 fl oz (about 2.5 cups); a quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, or a scant two-thirds cup. A "glassful" of sherry is unspecified, but a wineglassful was usually reckoned at around 2 to 2.5 fl oz.
- Vinegar or sherry, not bothThe two versions taste quite different. Sherry gives a mellow, almost aspic-like liquor; the vinegar version is sharper and reads as a proper soused fish. Malt or cider vinegar suits it better than distilled white.
- Add the wine off the boilSherry stirred in and then simmered hard loses its aroma. Add it at the end of the half hour, let it come back to a bare simmer for a minute, then draw the pan off.
- Turbot substitutesWhole turbot is expensive and often farmed now. Halibut, brill, cod cheeks or any firm white fish that flakes in large pieces will behave the same way; you need the head, skin and bones for the stock, so buy the fish whole or ask for the frame.
- Strain properlyPass the liquor through a fine sieve or muslin. Small bones and fragments of vegetable in a cold jellied liquor are unpleasant.
- The jellyTurbot bones and skin are rich in gelatine, so the strained liquor will often set lightly when chilled. If it does not, that is not a fault; reducing the stock a little before adding the wine will encourage it.
- Yield and servingThe flesh of a small turbot, or about 1 lb of picked cooked fish, serves three or four as a cold luncheon dish. Serve with brown bread and butter, thin cucumber, or a plain green salad.
Turbot was the grandest of English flat fish through the nineteenth century, served whole on a dedicated diamond-shaped turbot kettle and dressed with lobster or Dutch sauce; a household that bought one had a good deal of fish left after dinner, and the cook was expected to account for it. The method itself belongs to the long tradition of soused or "pickled" fish — the same treatment given to mackerel, herring and salmon — in which cooked fish is steeped in an acidulated, spiced liquor and eaten cold. What separates this from the keeping pickles of earlier centuries is the very small proportion of vinegar: the aim is flavour and a light set from the fish gelatine, not preservation.