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Fish Liquor
Four Parsley plants, roots and leaves.
One teaspoonful of grated Horse-radish.
One teaspoonful of Shalot Vinegar.
One teaspoonful of Cayenne Sauce.
One teaspoonful of Walnut Ketchup.
Stew the fish slowly, in just enough fish liquor to cover them, with the parsley, the horse-radish and above sauces. When the fish are done, lay them in a deep dish, with a teaspoonful of chopped parsley; strain the liquor in which the fish were cooked over them, and serve, adding a little more fish liquor to them if there is not enough left after the cooking to cover them.
Whitebait, Ingredients.
Three or four pounds of Lard or clarified Fat.
Whitebait. One large teacupful of Flour.
Put the lard in a stewpan and let it get very hot. If you use a fryometer the heat of the fat must not be less than 400 degrees. Pick the whitebait carefully out of the water, and lay them on a sieve to dry. Put the flour into a sheet of kitchen paper. Toss the whitebait in the flour, move them about quickly, and finger them as little as possible. Then turn the fish into a frying-basket and sift all the loose flour back on to the paper. Plunge the fish into the fat, which must be as hot as possible not to burn, for one minute; shake well, and serve at once very hot.
To devil whitebait, sprinkle them, when cooked, with pepper and cayenne mixed. Hand round with quartered lemon and thinly cut brown bread and butter. ( 57 )
Two preparations run together on one page: fish gently stewed in its own cooking liquor, and deep-fried whitebait. Both depend on restraint — the stew wants a bare simmer, the whitebait one minute and no more.
- What "fish liquor" meansNot a bottled product but the strained broth from poaching or simmering fish bones and trimmings, seasoned lightly — essentially a plain fish stock or court-bouillon. The recipe gives no quantity: you need enough to cover the fish, plus a little spare to top up the dish at serving, as the text directs.
- Four parsley plantsThis means four whole young plants pulled with their roots, roots washed and used along with the tops. A modern equivalent is a generous handful of parsley stalks plus a small parsley root or a piece of parsnip; the root gives the sweet, faintly celery-like note the leaves alone will not.
- Walnut ketchup and cayenne sauceWalnut ketchup is a thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts, vinegar and spice, still sold by a few British makers; mushroom ketchup or a scant teaspoon of Worcestershire stands in. "Cayenne sauce" was either bottled or made at home; a pepper-vinegar sauce of the Tabasco type is the nearest modern equivalent.
- Shallot vinegarMade by steeping chopped shallots in vinegar for a week or two. If you have none, use a teaspoon of white wine vinegar with a little very finely minced shallot.
- Stew slowlyThe hinge of the first recipe. The liquor should shiver rather than bubble — around 160-170F. A rolling simmer will shred fillets and turn the flesh cottony before the flavours have gone anywhere.
- A fryometer is a fat thermometerThe instruction is a floor, not a range: not less than 400F, and "as hot as possible not to burn". Any lower and the fish absorb fat and go limp; much higher and the flour scorches in the sixty seconds allotted.
- Three or four pounds of fatThat is depth for a deep stewpan, not a quantity consumed. A modern fryer or a heavy pot with 3-4 inches of oil does the same job; fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Handling whitebaitDry them well, flour them on paper rather than in a bowl, and shake off every loose speck — free flour burns in the fat and clouds it. The warning to "finger them as little as possible" is about keeping the fish whole and separate, not delicacy for its own sake.
- Yield and servingWhitebait is generally reckoned at 4-6 oz per person as a first course. Serve the moment it leaves the fat, with lemon and thin brown bread and butter as directed; it does not hold.
Whitebait — the fry of herring and sprat, netted in the Thames estuary in spring and early summer — was a London delicacy for most of the nineteenth century, and the annual Ministerial Whitebait Dinner at Greenwich is the fixture usually cited for its fashionable standing. The rule that it be floured dry, fried very briefly and eaten at once appears in cookbook after cookbook of the period, which suggests how often it was got wrong. The stewed fish above belongs to a different tradition: fish liquor was often kept and put to use, and the seasonings called for here — walnut ketchup, shallot vinegar, bottled cayenne sauce — are the standard sharp, dark store-cupboard condiments an English cook of the period reached for when a sauce needed depth without a long reduction.