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Whiting, Baked
Cut the heads off some full-sized whiting, empty, and cleanse the fish perfectly, opening them for the purpose as little as possible. Dry them, fold them in a cloth, and leave them for a quarter of an hour. Butter a baking-dish, and put them into it backs downwards, that the sauce may cover the thickest part of the flesh. Sprinkle salt and cayenne upon them, and put round them half an ounce of butter kneaded with a salt-spoonful of flour, half a tea-spoonful of chilli vinegar, a table-spoonful of port, and a small pinch of powdered mace for each fish. Lay a double fold of oiled paper upon the dish, and press it upon the fish. Put them in a gentle oven, and bake till done enough. Take them up carefully with a fish-slicer, place them on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and serve very hot. Time to bake the fish, twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, 4d. to 8d. each. Sufficient, on whiting for each person.
A plain Victorian baked fish with a small, sharp pan sauce. The main adjustments are the oven temperature, the timing, and sourcing the fish itself.
- The whitingEuropean whiting (Merlangius merlangus) is a small, lean member of the cod family, rarely sold whole outside Britain and northern Europe. A whole small hake, haddock, pollock or American silver hake stands in well; the original allows one fish per person but gives no weight, so judge by the size of the fish.
- "A gentle oven"A low to moderate oven, in the region of 300-325F; the book gives no figure. The dish relies on the fish steaming under paper in its own butter and wine rather than browning.
- TimingTwenty to thirty minutes may run long for a small whole fish by current standards. Check at 15 minutes and take it out when the flesh at the backbone is opaque and slips from the bone; published guidance for fish is 145F, though many cooks pull it a little earlier.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. The butter-and-flour knob is a beurre manié in miniature, there to bind the small amount of liquid into a sauce rather than to thicken it properly.
- Chilli vinegarA Victorian storecupboard staple: whole dried chillies steeped in vinegar for a week or two. A half teaspoon of cider or white wine vinegar with a scrape of chilli flakes gives the same effect.
- Port and maceUse a ruby or tawny port, not a cooking wine. Mace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed and tastes like a lighter, more floral nutmeg; grate a little fresh nutmeg if you have no ground mace, using slightly less.
- Oiled paperButtered parchment pressed directly onto the fish. This is a cartouche, and it matters more than it sounds: it keeps the exposed skin from drying while the small quantity of sauce works on the underside.
- Backs downwardsWhiting are round fish, so laying them belly-up puts the thick shoulder meat in contact with the liquid. Worth following literally, since there are only a couple of tablespoons of sauce per fish.
- YieldOne fish per person, as stated. The sauce is a spoonful each rather than a pool; serve with bread or plain potatoes to take it up.
Whiting was for most of the nineteenth century one of the cheapest fish in the British market, and Cassell's price note of fourpence to eightpence apiece places it well below turbot or sole. Its soft, very lean, easily digested flesh made it the standard invalid and nursery fish of the period, which is why Victorian cookery books carry so many recipes for it: boiled, fried curled with the tail in the mouth, and baked as here. The seasonings tell you the era as clearly as the fish does: chilli vinegar, port and mace, a corrective for a bland white fish in an English kitchen. The book's home nation has since largely lost the habit; North Sea whiting stocks came under heavy pressure in the twentieth century and the fish now more often reaches the table as processed white fish than whole with its head cut off on the kitchen table.