Skate
To do him honour at table, there should be music with the skate, for he loves it. One way of catching him used to be by playing on a fiddle. His love of melody was such that he came to the boat and was en- Smelts shared. It is well, therefore, to honour him with pleasant music when he is devoured. He comes in two distinct tribes to the English market-thornbacks and tinkers-the former much the better. He is generally sold at the fishmonger's crimped that is, cut in strips and rolled round. He is eaten in England plain boiled, with ordinary butter sauce, to which mustard is sometimes added, or else capers; in France with black butter. And he ought always to be served with some of his liver, which, if this organ be the seat of the affections in fish, cannot but be good in the skate the most affectionate fish in the world, a good father, a good mother, and fond of family life.
For triumphant occasions, take the following receipt :- Boil the skate with a tumblerful of milk, a little butter, two pinches of flour, two cloves, two shalots, a bayleaf, thyme, salt, and pepper. Take him out of this, and strain the liquor. Put him next into a pie-dish, the bottom of which has been covered with grated Gruyère cheese. Intermix cunningly a dozen little onions, which have been already cooked. Surround the dish with fried crusts. Then pour upon the skate the strained sauce in which he has been cooked; cover him with more grated cheese, send him to the oven till he takes a fine colour, and rejoice over him. Improve the occasion, too, by meditating on the domesticity of the thornback, and the goodness which has been the result of it.
SMELTS (in French éperlans, in Scotch sperlings).- The most delicate and spirituel of all the fish that come to our tables. Brillat-Savarin has named it the becafico of the sea, as the turbot is the pheasant, and the red mullet the woodcock. Happily we have not to enjoy the smelts, as we do the becafico, by deputy. It is best to fry them lightly in suet, dipping them first in flour, then in beaten egg, lastly in fine breadcrumbs. Serve them on a napkin, with a garnishing of fried parsley, the bitter of which is Snipe in pleasant contrast with this little exquisite of the ocean.
For a change, bake them as follows:- Pour some clarified butter into the dish in which they are to be served; also a glass of white wine, a few drops of anchovy sauce, and the juice of half a lemon. Arrange them prettily in the dish; sprinkle them with salt, mace, and cayenne; cover them with fine breadcrumbs; and moisten the whole with more clarified butter. Put the dish into the oven, and in ten or fifteen minutes it ought to be readythe crumbs light brown. Everybody knows that smelts, if fresh, ought to smell like cucumber. I do not so well understand what Beauvilliers means by saying that they smell like cucumbers or violets. They are in season from October till May.
Two dishes are buried in this entry: a baked skate gratin with Gruyère, and smelts either fried or baked. Both are workable, but skate has one requirement the Victorian text takes for granted.
- Buy the skate very freshSkate and other rays hold urea in their flesh, which converts to ammonia within a day or two of landing. A wing that smells sharply of ammonia should be rejected outright; a faint whiff can be reduced by an hour's soak in acidulated water or milk, but freshness is the only real answer.
- Thornbacks and tinkersThornback ray (Raja clavata) is still the standard market skate and is what to ask for. "Tinker" was a catch-all for smaller, less esteemed rays. Common skate (Dipturus batis) is now critically endangered and protected in UK and EU waters; it will not be on the slab, and should not be sought.
- "Crimped"Not a modern fishmonger's term. Here it means the wing scored and cut into strips, which were then rolled; the older sense of crimping was gashing very fresh fish so it firms in cold water. Ask instead for skinned skate wing, and either poach it whole or cut it into portions.
- A tumblerfulRoughly half a pint, somewhere between 250 and 285 ml of milk. "Two pinches of flour" is not a thickener at that volume. Expect a thin cooking liquor, not a sauce; reduce the strained liquid by half before pouring it over if you want body.
- Poach gently, brieflyThe recipe gives no time. Skate wing is done when the flesh slides off the cartilage in ribs, which takes about 8-12 minutes at a bare simmer for a wing of ordinary thickness. Boiling hard shreds it. It then goes to the oven only to brown the cheese — 425F/220C for 10 minutes or a few minutes under the grill.
- The liverSkate liver is genuinely prized in France (foie de raie) but is almost never sold in Britain or the US, since it is removed at sea. Its absence changes nothing structurally in the dish.
- Fried crusts and little onions"Fried crusts" are sippets — triangles of bread fried in butter, set round the rim. The "dozen little onions" should be pearl or button onions braised in butter and a little stock until tender before they go in; they will not cook through in the oven stage.
- SmeltsFrying in suet is a matter of period fat preference; any neutral oil at 350-375F works, and the flour-egg-crumb order given is correct. For the baked version, 400F/200C for the stated 10-15 minutes suits fish of about 4 inches. Allow 5 or 6 smelts a head as a first course. Rainbow smelt from the Great Lakes and Atlantic coast are the usual substitute where European smelt is unavailable.
- YieldA skate wing of 1.5-2 lb, prepared as above, serves two generously or three as part of a longer meal.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and hung on the name of Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and its entries are as much table talk as instruction. Dallas dwells on the skate's love of the fiddle and its family virtues, neither of which has any grounding beyond fishermen's lore. The fiddling story is traditional rather than documented. What is solid is the culinary geography Dallas sketches: skate boiled and served with butter sauce, mustard or capers in England, and au beurre noir in France, a pairing of brown butter, vinegar and capers still standard in Paris bistros. The gratin given here, with Gruyère and glazed button onions, is a restaurant flourish rather than a domestic one. Smelts belong to the same chapter; the "becafico of the sea" tag Dallas credits to Brillat-Savarin refers to the tiny fig-eating warbler eaten whole in Italy.