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Boiled Sheep's Head
Clean the fish and boil well done. Serve hot with butter and egg sauce.
Two sentences of instruction, which is all a nineteenth-century Virginia cook expected for a whole poached fish. The gaps are worth filling in, starting with what the fish actually is.
- The fish, not the sheepDespite the title, this is a fish: the sheepshead, Archosargus probatocephalus, a Chesapeake and South Atlantic porgy named for its blunt, oddly human teeth. Any firm white-fleshed fish head-on and whole works the same way — black drum, red snapper, striped bass, or thick cod fillets if a whole fish is not available.
- "Boil" means poachA rolling boil will shred the flesh and split the skin before the interior is done. Bring salted water or a court bouillon to a bare shiver — around 175-180F — slide the fish in, and hold it there.
- "Well done" is done, not overdone"Well done" in a book of this date signals thoroughly cooked rather than any measured endpoint. Modern practice takes fish to 130-140F at the thickest point, or until the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone. A whole 4 lb fish needs roughly 25-30 minutes; a 6 lb one about 40.
- Clean means gut and scaleSheepshead have heavy, tightly set scales and sharp dorsal spines. Scale before gutting, trim the fins with shears, and leave the head on — the collar and cheek meat are the best of the fish and the head holds the body together in the pot.
- Egg sauceThis is drawn butter or a thin white sauce with coarsely chopped hard-boiled egg stirred in at the end, seasoned with salt, pepper and often a little lemon or a spoon of the poaching liquid. It is not a custard and must not be allowed to boil once the egg is in.
- Lifting it outPoach on a rack, a cradle of cheesecloth, or in a fish kettle with a lifting plate. A cooked whole fish lifted by hand or spatula will break in the middle.
- YieldA whole fish of 4-5 lb serves four to five as a main course. Allow about 1 lb of whole round fish per person.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, reflects a tidewater kitchen where the Chesapeake supplied the table daily, and sheepshead was among the fish that came to it — dense, sweet, and large enough to poach whole for a family. The name is generally traced to the fish's flat incisor-like front teeth, though it is the rear molars that crush oysters, crabs and barnacles; the same diet is credited with its clean flavor. Egg sauce, a butter sauce enriched with chopped hard-boiled egg, was the standard English and Anglo-American accompaniment to boiled fish throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its appearance here shows how closely Virginia cookery still followed British practice a century after independence. The terseness is typical of the book: these recipes were written by cooks for cooks.