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Pepper and Salt (One ounce of Butter) (III)
One ounce of Butter.
One ounce of coarsely chopped Truffles.
One gill of Stock.
Two glasses of Sherry.
One gill of Stiff Aspic.
One pint of Madère Sauce.
One gill of Mayonnaise Sauce.
Cucumber. Lemon. Parsley. Wash the fish well, and make an opening for filling; make a stuffing of the whiting forcemeat, breadcrumbs, chopped onions, truffles, eggs, butter, pepper and salt, and fill the fish with it; sew up the opening, and put the fish in a well-buttered baking-dish, with the stock and wine. Cover it over with buttered paper, and cook it gently in the oven for about an hour; baste it occasionally.
When done, take it up and let it get cool, then skin it, and mask it over with sauce made of the Madère sauce, and a little stock well reduced, mix in a gill of stiff aspic, strain this and mask with it when it is nearly set. Garnish the fish with pieces of truffles, savoury jelly, slices of cucumber and lemon, and parsley. Serve it with the remainder of the sauce with a gill of mayonnaise sauce mixed with it.
This is the third part of a longer entry, and the ingredient list is a fragment: the fish itself, the whiting forcemeat, the breadcrumbs, onions and eggs all appear in the method without quantities, because they were given earlier in the book. Read it as a technique for a large whole fish served cold under a Madeira glaze rather than as a self-contained shopping list.
- The hinge: mask when the sauce is nearly setThe reduced Madeira sauce with aspic stirred in must be strained and then poured over the cold, skinned fish at the moment it is thickening but still pourable. Too warm and it runs off in streaks; too cool and it sets in the jug.
- Gills and glassesA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz or a generous half cup. A "glass" of sherry in this period means a wine glass, usually reckoned at about 2 to 2½ fl oz, so two glasses is roughly half a cup.
- "Cook it gently" in the ovenThe book gives no temperature; "gently" is best read as a low to moderate oven, no hotter than about 325F in modern terms. The fish is covered with buttered paper (parchment, or foil) and basted so it poaches in the stock and wine rather than browning; the recipe allows about an hour for a large whole fish, though it never states a size.
- Whiting forcemeatWhiting was the standard neutral white fish for a pounded forcemeat: raw fillet worked to a paste with butter, egg and breadcrumb. A food processor does in a minute what a mortar took ten to do. Any lean white fish — haddock, pollock, cod — behaves the same way.
- Madère sauceA demi-glace or well-reduced brown stock finished with Madeira. Bought demi-glace concentrate plus Madeira is the practical route; the sauce needs enough body to coat, so reduce it until it films a spoon before adding the aspic.
- Stiff aspicClarified, well-flavoured fish or veal stock set firm with gelatine. Modern leaf gelatine at roughly five or six sheets to a pint, adjusted to the brand, gives a jelly firm enough to hold a slice — stiffer than a dessert jelly, since it has to survive being cut for garnish.
- TrufflesCoarsely chopped truffle in this quantity was a mark of an expensive kitchen and is now prohibitive. Preserved truffle peelings, or finely chopped brown mushroom cooked dry with a few drops of truffle oil, gives the dark speckle the dish is built around.
- Cold food, cold disciplineThe fish is cooked, cooled, coated and garnished over several hours. Chill it at each stage and return it to the refrigerator between coats; do not let it sit out at room temperature while you build the decoration.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe names no fish and gives no weight, so no yield can be read off it. The remaining Madeira sauce mixed with a gill of mayonnaise is served separately and cold — it is a dressing for the plate, not a hot gravy.
This is a set-piece of late-Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery: a whole fish baked, cooled, skinned and then masked — coated — with a sauce stiffened with aspic so that it sets to a smooth, sliceable surface, in the manner of a chaud-froid. The point was the buffet table. Cold decorated dishes could be finished hours ahead, carried to a sideboard and cut in front of guests, which is why so much of the instruction concerns appearance rather than flavour: truffle cut into shapes, chopped savoury jelly, cucumber and lemon in overlapping slices. Madeira sauce, aspic and truffle together are the standard vocabulary of that style, borrowed from French kitchen practice and taught in Britain through cookery schools and the manuals attached to them. The pairing of a brown Madeira sauce with mayonnaise for the accompanying sauce looks odd now, and it is unusual enough that little should be built on it.