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Whiting, Stewed
Skin, cleanse, and fillet three full-sized whiting, trim the fillets neatly, and divide them into halves. Season with pepper, salt, and grated lemon-rind, and sprinkle over them a pinch of powdered mixed sweet herbs. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a saucepan, put the fish into it, and let them simmer gently for ten minutes. Pour a glass of sherry over them, and add the strained juice of half a lemon. Let them heat three or four minutes. Take them up carefully, put them on a dish, and pour the sauce over them. Serve immediately. Time, a quarter of an hour to simmer the fish. Probable cost, whitings, 4d. to 8d. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward butter-and-sherry braise for delicate white fish. The only real problem is the cooking time, which belongs to an era that liked fish cooked to the point of collapse.
- Cut the timeThin whiting fillets are done in three to four minutes in gently bubbling butter, not ten. Take them out when the flesh has just turned opaque and parts under light pressure; the further three or four minutes after the sherry goes in will finish them.
- Buying whitingWhiting (Merlangius merlangus) is common in Britain and Ireland but scarce on American counters. Hake, pollock, haddock or a small cod fillet all behave the same way. Three "full-sized" whiting yield roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of trimmed fillet.
- A slice of fresh butterAn unweighed quantity cut from the block; read it as roughly 1 1/2 to 2 oz (3-4 tbsp). "Fresh" generally meant newly made and unsalted, as against salted keeping butter, which is why the recipe has you season the fish yourself.
- A glass of sherryGenuinely ambiguous. A Victorian wineglass runs anywhere from 2 to 4 fl oz depending on the source; 3 fl oz of a dry amontillado or fino suits the quantity of fish here. Sweet cream sherry will overwhelm it.
- Mixed sweet herbsPeriod blends of dried sweet herbs typically drew on parsley, thyme and marjoram, sometimes with savory, sage or basil; proportions varied from cook to cook. A pinch of dried mixed herbs, or a scant teaspoon of chopped fresh thyme and parsley, gets you there.
- Keep the heat low"Simmer gently" in butter means the butter should foam quietly, never brown. Whiting is a soft-fleshed fish and will break up if it is stirred or moved; turn the fillets once with a fish slice, if at all.
- The sauceButter, sherry and lemon juice will not emulsify on their own. Lift the fish out, raise the heat for thirty seconds to reduce slightly, then swirl in a further knob of cold butter off the heat if you want it to cling.
- YieldThree to four servings, as the recipe itself states. The old prices, 4d. to 8d. a fish, put whiting among the cheaper fish at market.
Whiting was an everyday white fish of the Victorian British table: plentiful in the North Sea, landed cheaply, soft-fleshed and mild enough that cookery writers routinely recommended it for invalids and children alongside sole. Cassell's, an alphabetical household dictionary aimed at middle-class kitchens, gives it a long run of entries, among them the familiar fried whiting, skinned and curled with the tail fixed in the mouth. This stewed version follows a pattern also found in French cookery -- fish barely cooked in butter and finished with wine and lemon -- and the sherry is unremarkable, sherry being a common fortified wine in British kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century. The whole thing is a quarter of an hour's work, which is rather the point of an entry in a book meant to be consulted about what to do with what the fishmonger sent.