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Timbales of Haddock
à la Génoise.
Ingredients.
Half a pound of Haddock (dried Haddock).
One gill of white Sauce.
Half an ounce of Gelatine.
One gill of whipped Cream.
This entry is a skeleton: quantities only, no method, on the assumption that the cook already knew how to build a cold savoury mousse in a mould. Read it as a set of proportions rather than instructions.
- What the dish actually isAlmost certainly a cold fish mousse set with gelatine in small timbale or dariole moulds and turned out. No method survives on the page; the usual handling for such a mixture is to pound and sieve the haddock, combine it with the white sauce and dissolved gelatine, and fold the whipped cream in last, off the heat and as the mixture begins to thicken. Whether it was served as a savoury, an entrée or a cold supper dish the entry does not say.
- A gillAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so a scant 2/3 US cup. Sauce and cream together are on the order of 10 fl oz by volume, though the cream is measured after whipping and so contributes less liquid than that suggests.
- Dried haddockThis means a cured fish, smoked or salt-dried, Finnan haddie or similar, not fresh fillet. The half pound is most likely the weight as bought; poach it in milk or water, then skin, bone and flake it, and taste before adding any salt, as the cure carries plenty.
- The gelatine is the hingeHalf an ounce is about 14 g, roughly two US envelopes, and by modern standards that is a firm, distinctly rubbery set for this quantity of mixture. It was calculated for moulds that had to stand up on a plate in a warm dining room. For a mousse to be eaten with a spoon, 6-7 g is closer to current taste; keep the full amount only if you need clean unmoulding.
- Dissolving itSoften the gelatine in a little cold water, melt it gently over hot water, and add it warm but not hot to the fish and sauce. Poured in too hot it will slacken the cream; added too cool it will set in threads through the mixture.
- The white sauceA period white sauce here is a béchamel made with milk or fish stock, thick enough to coat a spoon, and cooled to room temperature before the cream goes in. Season it more assertively than you would a hot sauce, since chilling flattens flavour.
- Yield and servingThe quantities suggest four or five small dariole moulds, though the entry gives no number. Chill at least four hours, dip the moulds briefly in warm water to release, and serve cold with toast fingers or a little salad.
The savoury course, a small, sharply seasoned dish served after the sweet and before dessert, was a fixture of late Victorian and Edwardian dinners in Britain and barely exists anywhere else; timbales of this kind, cold mousses set in moulds and turned out, were among the most fashionable things to put in that slot because they could be made hours ahead and looked impressive with almost no last-minute work. Dried and smoked haddock was cheap, keenly flavoured and available inland all year, which made it a standby for cooks who wanted fish savouries without depending on a daily catch; the Scottish cures, Finnan among them, had been carried south by rail since the middle of the century. The clipped form of this entry, ingredients and proportions with no method at all, is not unusual for the period: bare ingredient lists of this kind turn up in domestic compendia and in abridged reprints as readily as anywhere else.