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Rechauffe of Fish
Take a pint of cold boiled fish, cut in small pieces. Put into the chafing-dish with two tablespoons of butter, half a cup of milk or cream, a cup of fine cracker or bread crumbs, a little pepper and salt and one egg slightly beaten. Let it simmer for five or six minutes.
A leftover dish built for the chafing dish, which means it comes together in one pan in under ten minutes. The whole thing succeeds or fails on heat control.
- Keep it below a boilThe egg is the binder, and at a full boil it scrambles and weeps, leaving grainy fish in thin milk. Hold the pan at a bare simmer and stir until it thickens, which is a matter of a few minutes.
- What a chafing dish isA shallow metal pan heated by a spirit lamp, sometimes set over a pan of hot water for gentler, indirect heat. A heavy skillet or saucepan over low heat does the same job; if your stove runs hot, set the pan in a wider pan of simmering water.
- A pint of fishMeasured by volume, not weight: a pint of flaked cooked fish is roughly 10 to 12 oz, or what you get from a pound of raw fillet. Cod, haddock, halibut and salmon all work; skip anything already sauced or smoked heavily.
- Cracker crumbs"Crackers" here would mean plain soda or water crackers rather than a modern seasoned cracker. A cup of fine crumbs is a lot of absorbency for half a cup of milk, so add the crumbs gradually and stop when the mixture holds together but is still moist.
- Milk or creamCream, being richer, is less likely to curdle if the pan gets away from you. Either is fine, but with milk keep the heat lower.
- Season at the endCold boiled fish may already be salted from its first cooking, so taste after the mixture thickens rather than seasoning at the start.
- Yield and servingServes two or three as a supper dish. Spoon it onto buttered toast or into pastry shells; lemon and chopped parsley suit it.
- Starting fishUse leftovers that have been refrigerated, not left standing, and reheat the mixture through until it steams. Fish held at room temperature for hours, as a nineteenth-century larder allowed, is not the same starting point.
R cha ff is simply French for "reheated," and in Anglo-American cookbooks of the late 1800s it became the polite label for a made-over dish: yesterday's boiled fish or joint of meat brought back to the table in a form that did not announce itself as leftovers. Its presence in a general household book reflects the economy expected of a middle-class kitchen, where a large boiled fish was bought whole and had to serve twice. The chafing dish it calls for was also having a moment: from the 1880s through the 1910s these spirit-lamp pans were fashionable for informal suppers and late-evening entertaining, and whole cookbooks were devoted to what could be cooked in one at the table.