Fish a la Paris
Cut any good, firm fish into small pieces, dredge with salt, pepper, and flour, and fry until brown in butter. Turn into a pot containing a pint of boiling water and half a teacupful of vinegar. Add a finely chopped onion, 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil, and a teaspoonful each of ground mace, cloves, and allspice. Cover closely, and simmer for an hour. Serve very hot, and garnish with sweet fennel.
A fried-then-braised fish in a sharp, heavily spiced vinegar broth, closer to a soused fish or escabeche than to anything Parisian. The instructions are sound apart from the cooking time, which belongs to an era of much larger fish steaks and much lower expectations.
- The hour of simmeringAn hour in acidulated liquid will reduce small pieces of fish to threads. Firm fish cut into pieces needs 6 to 10 minutes at a bare simmer once the liquid is hot; if you want the spiced liquor concentrated, simmer it alone for 20 minutes first, then add the fish.
- Half a teacupfulTeacup measures vary between books; period manuals give a teacupful as anything from about 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so half is somewhere between 2 and 3 fluid ounces (4 to 6 tablespoons). Against a pint of water that gives a distinctly sour broth. Start with 3 tablespoons of cider or white wine vinegar and add more at the end.
- Use a nonreactive potVinegar plus an hour in cast iron or unlined copper will pick up metal and turn the sauce grey. Enamelled cast iron, stainless steel or a glazed earthenware pot.
- The spicing is heavyA teaspoon each of mace, cloves and allspice in a pint of liquid is assertive by modern palates, and ground cloves dominate quickly. Half those amounts is a reasonable starting point; whole cloves and allspice berries with a blade of mace, fished out before serving, give a cleaner result.
- Dredging and fryingPat the fish dry before flouring or it will steam rather than brown. Brown it hard and briefly — the pieces finish cooking in the liquid, so colour is the only goal in the pan.