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Whiting aux Fines Herbes (English)
Clean and skin the fish well and fasten it with its tail in its mouth. Place it on a dish, season with pepper and salt, and sprinkle over it a teaspoonful of mixed sweet herbs in powder. Lay little pieces of butter here and there thickly upon it, cover with another dish, and bake in a moderately heated oven until done enough. Turn it once or twice that it may be equally cooked, and serve with the sauce poured over it. Time to bake the fish, twenty or thirty minutes. One fish for each person.
A plainly cooked whole fish, baked between two dishes so it steams in its own butter. The only real risk is overcooking.
- Oven temperature"A moderately heated oven" is usually rendered as a moderate oven, roughly 350F, though the book gives no figure. At that heat a whole whiting of around 8-12 oz may well be done before the twenty to thirty minutes the recipe allows; check early -- the flesh should just part from the backbone and read about 145F at the thickest point.
- The covered dishLaying a second dish over the first turns the oven into a steam bath and is what keeps a lean fish moist. A shallow baking dish with a tight lid, or a foil cover crimped down, does the same job. Do not skip it and do not vent it.
- Tail in the mouthSkinned whiting were traditionally curled and the tail pushed through the eye socket or fastened into the jaw with a cocktail stick. It is decorative only. A straight fish bakes just as well and is easier to turn.
- Turning the fishWith a covered dish and modern even oven heat, turning is unnecessary and mostly breaks the fish up. Spoon the melted butter over it once at the halfway mark instead.
- Mixed sweet herbsVictorian "sweet herbs in powder" typically meant a dried blend along the lines of parsley, thyme, marjoram and savory, sometimes with a little basil, though the mixture varied. Note that this is not the French fines herbes of the title, which is fresh parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil; either works, but fresh herbs should go on at the end rather than being baked.
- Buying the fishEuropean whiting is not widely sold outside the UK and northern Europe. Silver hake (marketed as whiting in the US), small haddock, pollock or a whole trout of similar size all behave the same way under a cover.
- The sauceNo sauce is given here, and the definite article ("the sauce") suggests one supplied elsewhere in the book. Failing that, the buttery, herb-flecked liquor left in the dish will serve; tip it into a small pan, add a squeeze of lemon, and swirl in a knob of cold butter if you want it to hold together.
- YieldOne whole fish per person, as stated. No size is given; a fish of roughly 8-12 oz suits the portion. Allow one fish between two if you find them larger and extend the baking by a few minutes.