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Browned Bread-crumbs (One ounce of Butter)
One ounce of Butter.
Take one pound of cold turbot, salmon, or any cold fish, break it into small pieces, put in a stewpan with a little salt and pepper, and the white sauce, to which may be added one tablespoonful of cream, also the anchovy sauce, and cayenne.
Butter some scollop shells, and sprinkle over them a few brown crumbs; fill in with the mixture; again sprinkle them with brown crumbs, and put them in the oven to get hot through. Serve on a napkin in the shells.
This is a scallop of cold cooked fish, the standard Victorian answer to yesterday's boiled turbot or salmon. The heading is a fragment: the ounce of butter and the white sauce belong to a preceding recipe in the book, so a few quantities have to be supplied.
- The missing sauceNo volume is given for the white sauce. For one pound of flaked fish, about half a pint (roughly a cup and a quarter, this being an Imperial measure) of medium white sauce binds it without drowning it; the mixture should mound on a spoon, not pour.
- Anchovy sauceThis is the bottled anchovy essence of the period, not modern Worcestershire. A teaspoon of anchovy paste, or two mashed fillets, gives the same salty depth. Season with salt only after adding it.
- Browned crumbsNot raw crumbs and not panko. Dry stale white breadcrumbs in a low oven or toss them in butter in a pan until they are the colour of a hazelnut, then use them cold. They are what keeps the top from going pallid in a short reheating.
- Scallop shellsDeep shells hold roughly half a cup each, so a pound of fish plus sauce fills four to six. Ramekins or small gratin dishes do the same job; butter them well as directed or the crumb lining will not adhere.
- Oven and timeThe recipe says only to put the shells in the oven to get hot through; no heat is specified. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits the purpose. Fifteen to twenty minutes brings the shells through; the fish is already cooked, so the aim is heat and a browned top, not further cooking. A minute under a hot grill finishes the crumbs if they are lagging.
- Breaking up the fishBreak, do not chop or mash. Turbot and salmon both flake in generous curds, and that texture is the whole point of the dish against a smooth sauce.
- Serving"On a napkin" means the hot shells were set on a folded linen napkin on the serving dish so they would not slide. Serves four to six as a first course, or three as a light supper with bread.
Scalloped fish in shells was a fixture of the late nineteenth-century British table, sitting somewhere between economy and elegance: it used up the cold remains of a large boiled turbot or a poached salmon, but arrived at table in real scallop shells looking like a made dish. Books of this sort routinely offered a chain of such recipes together, each assuming you had read the white sauce and the browned crumbs a page or two earlier. The bottled anchovy essence and the pinch of cayenne are the period's standard correctives for the blandness of reheated white fish, a habit generally traced to the eighteenth-century English fondness for anchovy as a seasoning rather than a fish in its own right. The scallop shell itself was cheap, reusable kitchen equipment.