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Baked Salmon-Trout with Cream Gravy
Wash, wipe dry; anoint well, inside and out, with melted butter and lemon juice. Lay the fish upon the grating of the baking-pan, pour a little boiling water in, but not enough to touch the fish. Bake, allowing twelve minutes to the pound, and baste twice with butter and twice with water from the pan below.
Place the fish in a hot covered dish, and set where it will keep hot while you strain the gravy left in the pan. Add to the gravy a cupful of scalded milk with a pinch of soda. Thicken with a white roux of butter cooked with flour, and season with salt, paprika, and a little minced parsley. Pour this over the fish; let it stand a few moments, and serve.
A whole fish roasted on a rack over water, with the pan drippings turned into a milk gravy. The method is sound; only the oven temperature and the doneness test need filling in.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A hot oven, in the region of 400F, suits the 12-minutes-to-the-pound timing for a whole fish of roughly 3 to 6 lb; in a slower, moderate oven expect to need appreciably longer per pound.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockWeight-based timings are rough for fish, since a long thin fish cooks faster than a deep-bodied one of the same weight. Pull the fish at 130 to 135F at the thickest point, next to the backbone; the flesh should just separate from the bone.
- "The grating of the baking-pan"A rack that sits inside the roasting pan. Any wire rack works, and a piece of parchment or a few lengths of oiled string under the fish makes it far easier to lift out whole.
- Salmon-troutAn older market name covering large lake trout and sea-run trout rather than a single species. Steelhead, arctic char, or a small whole salmon all behave the same way here.
- The pinch of sodaThis neutralises the acid in the lemon-laced pan juices, which would otherwise curdle the milk. A pinch means a pinch: too much gives a soapy, faintly metallic taste. Tempering the hot juices slowly into the scalded milk lowers the risk of curdling, though with markedly acid juices it is less certain than the soda.
- White roux proportionsFor the cupful of milk plus the strained pan juices, use about 1 1/2 tablespoons butter cooked with 1 1/2 tablespoons flour until it smells nutty but has taken no colour. Whisk the hot liquid in gradually and simmer two or three minutes to cook out the flour.
- The water in the panKeep it shallow enough that it never touches the fish, and top it up if it threatens to dry out. It exists to steam-moderate the oven and to give you basting liquid, not to poach.
- YieldA 4 lb fish serves six generously. Sauce the fish at the table rather than in the kitchen if you want the skin to stay intact for serving.