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Whiting, Broiled
Wash the whiting in salted water, and be careful to preserve the liver, as it is by some considered a delicacy. Dry the fish thoroughly, brush it over with oil, roll it in flour. Broil it over a clear, bright fire. Serve on a hot dish, either with a little piece of butter placed upon the fish, or with melted butter or parsley sauce; or, better still, with a sauce prepared as follows. Beat the yolk of an egg in a gallipot, and put with it two table-spoonfuls of water and two table-spoonfuls of tarragon vinegar. Put the gallipot into a saucepan, and surround it with boiling water. Place the pan on the fire, stir briskly for a minute, and add a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, and half a tea-spoonful of flour which has been kneaded into two ounces of butter. Stir the mixture till it thickens, work in a few drops of strained lemon-juice, and serve. The sauce must not boil. Time to broil the fish, six to twelve minutes, according to size. If liked, the tarragon vinegar can be omitted, and the sauce flavoured entirely with lemon-juice.
A plain grilled fish with what amounts to a loose bearnaise-adjacent egg sauce. The sauce is the part that needs attention; the fish is straightforward.
- The hinge: the sauce must not boilThe yolk is thickened in a vessel set in boiling water, not in direct contact with the pan. Keep the water at a bare simmer and pull the sauce the moment it coats a spoon — around 160-170F. Above that the yolk scrambles and no amount of stirring recovers it.
- GallipotA small glazed earthenware jar, originally for ointments and preserves. Use a heatproof bowl or a small stainless basin set over a pan of simmering water — a double boiler in all but name.
- "Broil" means grillIn a British book of this date, broiling is cooking on a gridiron over live coals. A modern overhead broiler or a ridged grill pan gives the same result; a "clear, bright fire" simply means the coals have stopped smoking and flaming so the fish takes no soot.
- Whiting and substitutesEuropean whiting (Merlangius merlangus) is a small, lean, soft-fleshed cod relative, usually sold whole at 3/4 to 1 lb. American "whiting" is a different fish (silver hake) but grills much the same. Haddock fillets, small pollock or sea bass all work.
- The liverSmall fish were sometimes cooked whole with the liver left in place, which the recipe itself notes is "by some considered a delicacy". Fish sold today arrives cleaned, so this instruction is moot unless you buy whole and gut it yourself.
- TimingSix to twelve minutes total is right for a whole small fish, turned once. Fillets need far less — three to four minutes a side at most. Whiting flesh is delicate and goes cottony if pushed; stop when it flakes at the backbone.
- Flour and oilThe oil-then-flour coating is what keeps a soft fish from welding to the bars. Season the flour, shake off the surplus, and let the grill or pan be fully hot before the fish goes on.
- Quantities and yieldThe sauce as written — one yolk, 2 tbsp water, 2 tbsp tarragon vinegar, 2 oz butter kneaded with 1/2 tsp flour — should be enough for two or three fish, though the book gives no yield. It is a thin pouring sauce, not a mounted hollandaise, and it will not hold; make it while the fish grills.
Whiting was among the cheaper fish on a Victorian British slab, landed in quantity in the North Sea and often dismissed as invalid food because it is lean, mild and easy to digest. That reputation for blandness explains the sauce here: an egg-and-tarragon-vinegar liaison thickened over hot water, a domestic cousin of the sauces of the French tradition such as b aise and hollandaise. Tarragon vinegar was, by most accounts, a common store-cupboard item in nineteenth-century English kitchens, made at home by steeping the herb in white wine vinegar, which is why the book can treat it as an assumed ingredient and then offer lemon juice for anyone without it. The instruction to save the liver is a reminder that small fish were once cooked whole with the liver in place, a habit that survives now mainly with red mullet and woodcock.