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Pepper and Salt (One glass of White Wine)
One glass of White Wine.
Line a border mould with a thin layer of aspic jelly; when set mask the inside with a layer of Beurre Montbellier, prepared as follows:
Pound the egg in a mortar with the shalot, the chopped parsley, tarragon, chervil, and fennel leaves, the Gorgona anchovies boned, the butter and cooked spinach. When well pounded add the cream, season with pepper and salt, and rub through a fine wire sieve, dilute with about half a gill of aspic jelly, and mask the mould as directed.
Pound half a pound of the cooked whiting freed from bones, add the anchovy paste, half a teaspoonful of essence of anchovy, or a tablespoonful of white sauce, the yolks of eggs, and the cream.
When smooth rub through a fine sieve, mix with about half a pint of liquid aspic jelly, season with a dust of cayenne pepper and salt. This is the whiting purée.
Take the fillets of a large sole, cut each in two, flatten them a little with a cutlet-bat, fold in two, trim the sides, put them in a buttered sauté-pan, season with pepper and salt, moisten with a glass of white wine, and cook in a slow oven until tender. When done take them out and put them to cool.
Line the mould again with the whiting purée, set the fillets of sole, after being well drained, in a row in the border, fill up with the remainder of the whiting purée, and put on the ice to set.
Turn out the mould on a round entrée dish and put some salad round it, composed of lettuce, endive and cucumber, etc.
This is a late-Victorian cold entrée — a green-butter-lined aspic border filled with whiting mousse and folded sole fillets — printed here without its ingredient list, and with a construction that no modern kitchen should reproduce.
- Why it fails: uncooked egg yolks in a cold set mousseThe whiting purée takes raw yolks and is never heated after they go in; it is bound with liquid aspic, chilled, turned out and served cold. Nothing in the sequence brings the egg to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the mould then sits at room temperature on the serving dish while the salad is arranged around it. Use a current recipe for cold fish mousse if you want this effect.
- Why it fails: the aspic is an unmeasured, unregulated mediumWhy it fails: the aspic is an unregulated medium -- Aspic jelly here is assumed to be house-made stock jelly of unstated setting strength, used in three separate stages as a lining, a butter diluent and a binder; the recipe gives rough volumes (half a gill, half a pint) but no guide to how strong the jelly should be. A lightly cooked fish and dairy mixture held in savoury jelly at ambient temperature is a recognised medium for bacterial growth.
- The printed recipe has no ingredient listThe heading "One glass of White Wine" appears to be the tail end of a quantity column that has not been reproduced here. Every direction refers to "the shalot", "the butter", "the cream", "the yolks of eggs", "the anchovy paste" as though the amounts were on the page. They are not recoverable, and guessing them is not a reconstruction.
- Beurre MontbellierA misprint for beurre de Montpellier, the green compound butter of pounded herbs, spinach, shallot, anchovy, egg and butter, passed through a sieve. It was used chiefly as a coating for cold fish.
- Gorgona anchoviesSalted anchovies packed at Gorgona, off the Tuscan coast, a grade prized in British kitchens and named in some high-class cookery books of the period. Ordinary salt-packed anchovy fillets are their nearest equivalent today.
- Old measures and toolsA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint (5 fl oz), so half a gill is about 2½ fl oz, roughly five tablespoons. A cutlet-bat is a flat metal or wooden pounder for flattening fillets; a border mould is a shallow ring mould, and the finished dish is unmoulded as a ring with salad set round it.
- WhitingA small, lean member of the cod family, prized in Victorian cookery because its flesh pounds to a very white, fine paste. It is sold in Britain but rarely in North America, where the name may be applied to a different fish.
Cold moulded entrées of this kind belong to the grande cuisine of the later nineteenth century. Beurre de Montpellier is generally traced to the south of France and takes its name from the city, though by this period it was a standard item of the professional cold larder in London and Paris rather than a regional preparation, appearing in the French professional literature as a coating for cold salmon and sole. The recipe's structure — a border mould lined first with clear aspic, then with green butter, then with a fish forcemeat, with the visible fillets set in the wall — is chef's work aimed at the cross-section, and the pounding and double sieving it demands were done by a kitchen with several pairs of hands and no food processor. The ingredient quantities appear to have been printed in a separate column that has not been reproduced here.