Filled Fish
Prepare trout, pickerel or pike in the following manner: After the fish has been scaled and thoroughly cleaned, remove all the meat that adheres to the skin, being careful not to injure the skin; take out all the meat from head to tail, cut open along the backbone, removing it also; but do not disfigure the head and tail. Still another way is to pull off the whole skin of the fish, then remove all the meat, being very careful not to have any bones mixed with it; chop the meat in a chopping bowl, then heat about a quarter of a pound of butter in a spider, throw a handful of chopped parsley, and some soaked white bread; remove from the fire and add an onion grated, salt, pepper, pounded almond, three whole eggs and the yolks of two, also a very little nutmeg grated. Mix all thoroughly and fill the skin until it looks natural. Boil in salt water, containing a piece of butter, celery root and parsley and an onion; when done remove from the fire and lay on a platter. Have some almonds blanched, cut each almond lengthwise into four strips and stick them into the body of the fish. Thicken the fish sauce with yolks of eggs, adding a few slices of lemon.
This is whole stuffed fish in the older sense: the skin is kept intact as a casing and the boned, seasoned flesh is packed back inside. The recipe assumes you can bone a fish and gives no timings, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- The hinge: keep the skin wholeEverything depends on lifting the flesh out without tearing the skin. Work with a small flexible knife and a spoon, chill the fish first so the flesh is firm, and leave the head and tail attached to the skin. If the skin does tear, sew it or wrap the reassembled fish in cheesecloth before it goes into the water.
- "A spider"A cast-iron frying pan, originally one with legs for standing over coals. Any heavy skillet does the work here, which is only to melt the butter and wilt the parsley.
- Pounded almondGround sweet almonds, used as a binder and for richness — almond flour is the direct substitute. Use only sweet almonds; the bitter almonds sometimes called for in old books contain cyanogenic compounds and are not sold for eating.
- Soaked white breadCrustless white bread soaked in water or milk and squeezed nearly dry, perhaps two thick slices for a 3 lb fish. The quantity is left to the cook: the stuffing should hold its shape on a spoon, not run.
- Quarter pound of butterOne stick, 4 oz. That is generous by modern taste for a single fish; half is enough if you want the flesh to read as fish rather than as forcemeat.
- Poaching, not boiling"Boil in salt water" means a bare simmer — a rolling boil splits the skin and squeezes the stuffing out. Bring the court bouillon of celery root, parsley, onion and butter to a simmer, lower the fish in, and hold it at about 180F for 35 to 45 minutes for a 3 to 4 lb fish, until the center reaches 145F.
- Thickening the sauceStrain some of the poaching liquid, whisk a little of it into the yolks to temper them, then return the mixture to low heat and stir until it coats a spoon. Above roughly 180F the yolks scramble; the lemon goes in at the end.
- Fish choicePickerel and pike are bony and firm, and that firm flesh sets well in the skin. Farmed trout or walleye behave similarly. Skip soft-fleshed fish, which will not hold in the skin.
- YieldOne 3 to 4 lb fish serves six as a first course, four as a main. Fish of this kind were often served chilled and sliced across the body, with the poaching liquid setting to a light jelly, though this recipe's egg-yolk-and-lemon sauce points to serving it warm.
This is a gefilte fish of the older, unfashionable kind — gefilte is simply Yiddish for "filled," and the name originally described exactly this operation: skinning a pike or carp, working the flesh into a seasoned forcemeat with soaked bread, onion and egg, and returning it to the skin to be poached whole. The almonds, nutmeg and egg-yolk-and-lemon sauce point to a Central European table rather than a Polish one, since the sweeter style is conventionally associated with Poland and the peppery, unsweetened style with Lithuania. Over the twentieth century the skin was quietly abandoned in most kitchens and the stuffing was poached in balls or loaves instead, which is why "gefilte fish" now names something that is not filled at all.