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Whiting Forcemeat
Skin and fillet two or three whiting, scrape the flesh with a spoon, and rub it through a wire sieve. To twelve ounces of fish thus prepared put half a pound of panada (see PANADA) and six ounces of fresh butter. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, mix the ingredients thoroughly, and add gradually three whole eggs and the yolks of two. Poach a small quantity of the forcemeat to ascertain whether or not it is firm, yet light and delicately flavoured. If too stiff, mix a little cream with it. Keep it on ice till required.
This is the classic white-fish quenelle base — a panada-bound mousseline stiff enough to poach into dumplings or line a mould. Everything depends on keeping it cold and testing before you commit.
- PanadaA panada is generally a paste of bread or flour cooked with milk or stock and butter, then dried out over heat until it leaves the sides of the pan; the book's own PANADA entry should be consulted for its version. A flour panada behaves like a thick choux; a bread one is softer and gives a lighter result. Whichever you use, cool it fully before it meets the fish.
- The weights12 oz fish (about 340 g), 8 oz panada, 6 oz butter, three whole eggs plus two yolks. That is a high proportion of butter and egg by modern standards, and it yields roughly 2 lb of forcemeat — a large batch of quenelles, or enough to line a sizeable mould.
- WhitingThe book means European whiting, Merlangius merlangus, a small mild member of the cod family. American "whiting" is a different fish (hake), though it works. Haddock, pollock, cod or any lean white fish will do; oily fish will not.
- Scraping and sievingScraping with a spoon leaves the sinew and skin behind on purpose. A food processor does the same job in seconds, but pass the puree through a drum sieve or fine mesh afterwards anyway — one strand of connective tissue ruins the texture.
- Keep it coldThe hinge of the whole recipe. Butter and egg emulsified into fish protein are liable to split as the mixture warms, so keep it as cold as you can. Chill the bowl, work in short bursts, and return it to the refrigerator between stages rather than pushing on.
- The test quenellePoach a teaspoonful in barely trembling salted water for two or three minutes. If it collapses, the mixture needs more egg or a firmer panada; if it is dense and rubbery, loosen with cream a spoonful at a time, as directed. Adjust seasoning at this point, since raw fish forcemeat tastes of very little.
- Poaching, not boilingWater at a full boil will blow the quenelles apart and toughen them. Hold it at about 80C/175F — the surface should shiver, not bubble.
- Storage"Keep it on ice till required" would have meant a short hold on ice rather than long keeping. Treat it as raw fish: refrigerate covered and use within a day, or shape and poach it and keep the cooked quenelles chilled.
Forcemeats of this kind are the backbone of nineteenth-century professional cookery, and this one is best understood as a building block — the same paste becomes quenelles, a garnish for turbot, a lining for a timbale, or the stuffing of a boned fish. The technique is French, and whiting is often said to suit the purpose because it is bland, very lean and low in connective tissue, so it takes butter and egg without fighting them; quenelles de merlan appear throughout the Carême-to-Escoffier tradition. The panada is the older element, a bread-or-flour binder generally traced back through medieval European cookery, and its job here is to hold water and fat in suspension so the finished dumpling stays tender rather than setting hard. Cassell's, published for a large middle-class British readership in the late Victorian decades, is teaching a household cook a restaurant method — including the test-poach, which is what a professional would do before committing several pounds of expensive mixture.