Fish à La Créme
1 pint of pieces of cold cooked fish Yolks of two eggs 1 pint of milk I blade of mace I bay leaf Sprig of parsley Small piece of onion I large tablespoonful of butter 2 even tablespoonfuls of flour Put the milk in a farina boiler, add to it the onion, mace, parsley and bay leaf, and let stand until boiling hot. Put the butter in a frying pan to melt without browning, add the flour, stir until thoroughly mixed, strain into it the milk, stir continually until it boils. Take from the fire, add a teaspoonful of salt, a quarter-teaspoonful of pepper, and the well beaten yolks, add the fish carefully and turn the whole into a baking-dish or into small individual dishes, sprinkle the top lightly with bread crumbs, and put in the oven a few moments to brown.
A creamed-fish gratin built on a béchamel infused with aromatics. It reads as a way to use up yesterday's boiled fish, and it works best when the sauce is treated with a little care.
- The hinge: the yolks go in off the heatThe pan comes off the stove before the beaten yolks are stirred in, and the mixture is never boiled again. Returned to a boil, the yolks curdle and the sauce goes grainy under the crumbs.
- Farina boilerA double boiler. Use a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or simply a heavy saucepan over low heat, watching that the milk does not catch while it infuses.
- A pint of fishMeasured by volume, not weight — roughly 1 lb of cooked fish, flaked into pieces the size of a walnut half. Cod, haddock, halibut and salmon all suit it; delicate fish will break down into the sauce.
- Blade of maceA dried strip of the aril around the nutmeg, still sold whole in spice shops. About 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace is the usual substitute, though it will not strain out and gives a slightly muddier sauce.
- Strain the milk into the rouxThe instruction is deliberate: the onion, mace, bay and parsley have done their work and are discarded. Add the hot infused milk to the butter-and-flour paste gradually and it will thicken smoothly.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only "a few moments to brown." The dish is being browned, not cooked, so a hot oven, or a broiler for two or three minutes, gets colour before the sauce breaks. Watch it; the crumbs go from gold to black quickly.
- CrumbsDry, fine breadcrumbs, sprinkled thinly. Dotting them with a little melted butter helps them brown evenly, though the original does not mention it.
- YieldProbably serves about four as a light main course; the recipe mentions small individual dishes but gives no number. Serve immediately — the sauce stiffens as it cools.
Milk infused with mace, bay, onion and parsley and thickened with a butter-and-flour roux is the classic béchamel treatment, and enriching it with yolks off the heat turns it toward a sauce à la crème. Mace was a common fish seasoning in Anglo-American cookery from the eighteenth century onward, valued for the way its warmth sits under dairy without the sharpness of nutmeg. The pattern — cold cooked fish, a bound sauce, crumbs, a moment under heat — lies behind countless fish pies and gratins, and it answered the practical problem of the second day of a large boiled fish.