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Turbot, Roe Of
Handle the roe as lightly as possible. Blanch it and cut it into slices. Put these into a buttered dish, bake until done enough, and keep them well basted during the process. Lay them on a hot dish, and pour over as much nicely-flavoured white sauce as will cover them. Garnish the dish with parsley and sliced lemon, and serve very hot. Time to bake the roe, fifteen to twenty-five minutes. Sufficient for a small dish.
A short Victorian method for a by-product most fishmongers no longer sell separately. The instructions assume you already know how to make a white sauce and how to judge a fish roe by feel.
- Handle it lightlyRoe sacs are held together by a thin membrane that tears at the slightest rough handling, after which the eggs weep out and the slices fall apart. Lift the roe with two hands or a slotted spoon rather than tongs, and do not rinse it under a running tap.
- What blanching means hereSlide the whole roe into barely simmering salted water, or water with a splash of vinegar, until it firms enough to slice cleanly; a few minutes for a small roe, longer for a large one. It should not be cooked through at this stage; the baking finishes it.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A moderate oven, around 350F/175C, suits the fifteen to twenty-five minutes stated, with thinner slices at the shorter end of that range.
- BastingMelted butter in the dish is the whole point of the basting; roe dries out and turns chalky very quickly. Spoon the butter over every five minutes, or lay a buttered paper over the top.
- White sauceA Victorian white sauce of this kind is butter and flour cooked to a blond roux with milk, or milk and fish stock, seasoned and sometimes enriched with cream or sharpened with lemon juice or anchovy. "Nicely-flavoured" is the instruction that matters, as the roe itself is mild.
- Sourcing the roeTurbot roe is rarely sold on its own now. Ask a fishmonger to save it when whole turbot are broken down, or use hard cod, hake or grey mullet roe, which behave much the same way under this treatment.
- Yield"Sufficient for a small dish" is all the book says: a savoury or light supper course rather than a main, the quantity depending on the size of the roe.
Turbot was among the prized flatfish on the Victorian table, poached whole in its own diamond-shaped kettle and brought out for dinner parties; the roe, liver and fins were put to use, treated in separate small entries like this one rather than thrown away. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is organised as an alphabetical reference, so a fish that merited a page of its own also earned sub-entries for its parts, and this attention to the offcuts is characteristic of a period when a large fish represented real money. Hard roe of firm-fleshed fish was generally treated as a savoury or a light entrée rather than a main dish, served with a cream sauce and the standard nineteenth-century garnish of parsley and lemon that signalled "fish" to anyone looking at the table.