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Eighteen Olives (One glass of Claret)
One glass of Claret.
Three pounds of Salmon (head piece or middle cut). One Bouquet Garni. One ounce of Butter. One chopped Shalot. One Carrot. One sliced Onion. Half a gill of Wine Vinegar.
Salt. Pepper. Aromatic Seasoning.
Half a pint of Matelote Sauce.
Clean and wash the fish, trim it nicely, and put it in a well-buttered sauté-pan with the sliced carrot, onion, bouquet of herbs, and seasoning to taste.
Moisten with the wine and vinegar, cover with a buttered paper; put it in the oven to cook for about an hour; baste it well from time to time.
When ready for serving, take it out and dish it up, remove the upper skin, and keep hot.
Fry the shalot in a little butter, add the liquor left from the fish to it; boil up and add the matelote sauce. Reduce a little. Sauce over the fish, garnish with stoned and stuffed Spanish olives, and serve the remainder of the sauce separately.
This is a whole fish braised in red wine and finished with matelote sauce — a French preparation set down in shorthand for a cook who already knew the drill. The printed ingredient list has been cut off partway, so several items named in the method (the fish itself, carrot, onion, herbs, shallot) carry no quantities.
- What is missingNo fish is named and no weight given; the method also calls for carrot, onion, a bouquet of herbs and shallot that never appear in the printed list. Matelote sauce suggests a freshwater fish — carp, tench, eel or trout — though the recipe gives no indication of its size.
- A glass of claretVictorian measures were not standardised; a wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though some kitchens used a larger glass. Claret means dry red Bordeaux; any dry, unoaked red works. Half a gill of wine vinegar is 2.5 fl oz by imperial measure, which is assertive against this much wine — taste before committing all of it.
- Aromatic seasoningA house spiced-salt mixture, typically salt and pepper with mace, clove, bay and thyme ground fine. A pinch of quatre épices with salt and pepper stands in for it.
- Matelote sauceA brown fish sauce: red wine reduced with mushroom trimmings and onion, thickened with espagnole or a brown roux, often finished with butter and a little cayenne. Half a pint in this book means the imperial half pint, 10 fl oz.
- The hour in the ovenThe book gives no oven heat, only 'about an hour' with frequent basting under a buttered paper. Judge by the fish rather than the clock: it is done when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone, which for a moderate whole fish in a moderate oven may be well short of the full hour.
- Buttered paperA cartouche of parchment cut to the pan and buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It keeps the exposed flesh from drying while still letting the cooking liquor reduce.
- The skinRemoving the upper skin after cooking is deliberate: it is done at the last moment so the sauce coats bare flesh and the fish does not dry out beforehand. Lift it with the back of a knife rather than scraping.
- The olivesSpanish olives, stoned and stuffed; anchovy or pimiento were the usual fillings of the period. The title preserves the count of eighteen from the truncated ingredient list, but the recipe states no number of servings.
Matelote is the boatman's dish — from matelot, sailor — a stew of freshwater fish cooked in red wine with onions and mushrooms, traditionally associated with the rivers of the Loire and the Marne, where carp, eel and pike were what came to hand. French professional cookery had long since turned the stew into a sauce: the wine, onion and mushroom reduction thickened with espagnole, ready to be spooned over a fish cooked separately and served neatly. That shift from one-pot to composed dish is exactly what a book of this sort exists to teach, and the language shows it — claret rather than Bordeaux, the buttered paper, the sauce sent to table both over the fish and in a boat, all marks of a British kitchen working in the French manner for dinners served in courses. The garnish of stuffed Spanish olives belongs to the same habit of thinking: every plate identical, nothing left to the carver.