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Fish or Poissons: Hollandaise
Barbue aux câpres is boiled and served with melted butter and capers; à la Hollandaise, it is served with Hollandaise sauce; sauce homard, with lobster sauce. à la purée de câpres is served with a sauce of melted butter, purée of capers, gherkins and spinach. à l'Espagnole-served in a rich brown sauce. à la Sicilienne-served in a white sauce with lemon juice, and shreds of lemon peel and tarragon. à la Ravigote-baked, and served in green Ravigote sauce with capers. à la Conti-cooked with oil, stock, white wine and herbs. à la Sainte-Ménehould. Pieces of brill with white sauce, covered with breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan, and browned.
Filets de barbue à la Juive. Fillets of brill cut in two or more pieces, breadcrumbed and fried.
Served with Hollandaise sauce. à la Provençale are fried fillets served in anchovy sauce, garnished with stuffed olives.
Filets de barbue en matelote are fried fillets dressed on a border of mashed potatoes, with Matelote sauce.
They are also dressed au gratin, à la meunière, à l'Impératrice, and in many of the ways given for turbot.
CARP.
Carpe frite is split and fried. à la maître d'hôtel is grilled and served with Maître d'hôtel butter. à l'Italienne-stewed in Italian sauce. aux fines herbes served in a brown sauce with chopped mushrooms and herbs. farcie-stuffed and baked. It may be served with a brown sauce. à la bière-boiled in beer with bacon, onions, carrots, etc. à la Marquise-stewed, and served in a white sauce with whipped cream, chopped gherkins, and capers. à la Chambord-larded, stuffed with forcemeat, boiled in court-bouillon and browned. à la Marinière is sauté with butter, breadcrumbs, chives, garlic, etc. au bleu is pickled.
Coquilles de laitances de carpe is carp roe scalloped. Casserole de laitances. Carp roe stewed in stock with wine and herbs, and served in the sauce with butter, flour and lemon juice.
CHAR.
Ombre Chevalier en terrine is potted char.
COD.
Cabillaud à la Hollandaise is served with Hollandaise sauce ; à l'Italienne, with Italian sauce. à la Victoria-served in a Cardinal sauce with anchovies. à la Portugaise-slices dipped in flour and fried; served in tomato sauce with anchovy, etc. à la Grand Hôtel-slices cooked in wine with butter and lemon juice, and served in the sauce, garnished with shreds of parsnips and little sprigs of parsley. à l'Indienne is fried or grilled, and served with curry sauce. à la Garonne-pieces of cod with oil, chopped capers, anchovies and parsley; covered with breadcrumbs and browned. à la crème-pieces of cod in Béchamel sauce, covered with breadcrumbs and browned. farci stuffed and baked. grillé à la Colbert-broiled, and served on Maître d'hôtel butter, with Maître d'hôtel sauce. recrépi, sauce aux huîtres-crimped, and served with oyster sauce; aux moules, with mussel sauce. en fricassée à la Suède is a fricassee of cod in mayonnaise sauce with horseradish. It is served in an ornamental border of mashed potatoes.
Four fish are covered here, and the space given to each tells you what was easy to buy. Brill and carp get long lists; char gets four words.
- Barbue is brill, not turbotA flatfish of the same family, usually cheaper, with softer flesh. The page says outright that brill fillets can be dressed in many of the ways given for turbot, which is the clearest statement in the book that one fish was standing in for a grander one.
- Carp has fallen out of the shopsIt gets more entries than cod here, fried, grilled, stuffed, stewed in beer, cooked in court-bouillon, because it was an ordinary thing to buy. In Britain today it is most easily found in shops serving central European or Chinese customers, and it has to be asked for.
- Au bleu is not picklingThe page glosses it as pickled, and that will mislead you. The bleu is a colour: a very fresh fish goes into a hot court-bouillon sharpened with vinegar, and the skin turns blue-grey. Nothing is preserved and nothing is kept.
- Laitances are soft roeCarp milt, scalloped in shells or stewed in stock with wine. Soft herring roe is sold frozen and behaves the same way; it is mild, rich and collapses if it is overcooked, which is why both entries here keep it in a sauce.
- Crimped and recrépiCrimping is a treatment of very fresh fish described in older English cookery: deep gashes cut into the thick flesh and the pieces plunged into cold water to firm them. It only worked on fish killed within hours, which is why the instruction has gone along with the fish market that made it possible.
- Everything ends under a hot grillCount the lines that finish with breadcrumbs and grated cheese browned on top. The kitchen had a dedicated hot iron for exactly that finish, and a modern grill at full heat on a shallow dish is the direct equivalent.
The national adjectives on this page are the most revealing thing about it. Hollandaise, Italienne, Espagnole, Sicilienne, Portugaise, Juive, Provençale, Suède, Indienne and Garonne are not claims about where any of these dishes came from; each one is shorthand for a sauce or a garnish that the kitchen made to its own formula, and the page quietly supplies the translation. A hostess needed them because the fish course sat in a fixed position in a formal dinner, between the soup and the entrées, and had to be named on the card whether anybody ate much of it or not. What the geography actually records is a shopping list of imported flavourings, anchovy, olives, oil, paprika, curry powder, horseradish, that a British kitchen could keep on a shelf and apply to whatever the fishmonger had.