Home › Dressed Fish › One Egg (Two ounces of Bread-crumbs)
One Egg (Two ounces of Bread-crumbs)
Two ounces of Bread-crumbs.
Make the brown sauce hot and stir into it the anchovy sauce and the gherkins, chopped finely.
Take the stewpan off the fire, and add the fish in small flakes, removing all skin and bone. Turn this on to a plate, and when cold form into little cakes, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry them; serve with fried parsley.
A Victorian way of using up cooked fish and a spoonful of leftover sauce. The heading and ingredient list have come through in fragments, so the quantities of fish and sauce are not recoverable from the page itself — work by feel, with the crumbs and egg as the only fixed figures.
- The missing quantitiesOnly the egg and the two ounces (about 1 cup, fresh, or a scant 1/2 cup dried) of breadcrumbs are specified; the weight of fish, the brown sauce and the gherkins are not. A workable ratio is about 1 lb flaked cooked fish to 4-5 tablespoons of thick sauce — just enough to bind, no more.
- Brown sauceHere this means a made brown gravy sauce of the espagnole type, or its simpler household version, rather than bottled brown table sauce. It must be thick enough to set firm when cold; a thin sauce gives cakes that collapse in the pan.
- Anchovy sauceA Victorian storecupboard staple: anchovy essence let down with butter and flour. Anchovy paste, or a few mashed salted anchovies, does the same job. Add it before salting anything, since it carries most of the seasoning.
- The hinge — cool it completelyThe mixture must be spread thin on a plate and chilled right through before shaping. Warm or barely cool mixture will not hold a cake, and the coating will burst in the fat. An hour in the refrigerator, or longer, is not wasted.
- Flakes, not pasteFold the fish in off the heat and keep the flakes intact. Stirring over heat breaks the fish down into a pulp and the finished cake tastes of sauce rather than fish.
- Egg and breadcrumbBeaten egg, then crumbs, pressed on firmly; a second coat gives a sturdier crust. Fry at 350-375F until deep gold, two to three minutes — everything inside is already cooked, so the only object is colour and a hot centre.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly and drop them into the same fat for 10-15 seconds, until they stop hissing and turn brilliant dark green. Wet parsley spits violently; a lid held as a shield is sensible.
- YieldA pound of fish makes eight to ten small cakes, enough for four as a first course or three as a light main dish.