John Dory
Jean Doré, or Saint Pierre, en ravigote is served in Ravigote sauce. à la crémière is boiled in milk and water, and served with a sauce of cream, butter and lemon juice. à la purée de crevettes served in a purée of shrimps with white sauce. à la batelière-served in white sauce with button onions, mushrooms and essence of anchovy. en matelote marinière-served in Matelote sauce with oysters. à l'Orléannaise is stuffed with fish forcemeat, braised, and served in Cardinal sauce with tarragon vinegar, and slices of gherkins and beetroot.
It is dressed au gratin, à la Vatel, à la Parisienne, etc., in the same way as turbot.
LAMPREY.
Lamproie à l'Italienne is filleted, and stewed in wine with oil, onions, herbs and lemon juice. au suprême is cut up, sauté, and served in a sauce of red wine with truffles.
They are also dressed in many of the ways given for eels.
MACKEREL, Maquereaux, sauce fenouil are boiled and served with fennel sauce. à la maître d'hôtel-broiled, and served in Maître d'hôtel sauce. Fillets are also dressed in this way. aux cerises are broiled, and served with cherry sauce. à la Normande are stuffed and baked. à la Flamande-stuffed with chopped shallots and chives, butter and lemon juice; and broiled. grillés au beurre noir-grilled, and served with black-butter sauce. aux groseilles vertes-stuffed with green gooseberries, pieces of herring, etc.; boiled, and served in green gooseberry sauce.
Filets de maquereaux à la Vénitienne-fillets sauté, and served in a rich brown sauce with chopped tarragon and truffles. à la Orly-fried fillets served with tomato sauce.
Three fish with nothing in common beyond their place in the alphabet. One is now a luxury, one has all but vanished from English tables, and the third is the cheapest good thing on the counter.
- Jean Doré and Saint PierreJohn Dory carries both names, and the French one belongs to a tradition that the dark spot on its flank is the mark of St Peter’s thumb. It is an ugly fish with an enormous head, and well under half its weight comes back as fillet, which is most of what makes it costly.
- Why it suits this pageThe flesh is firm and holds together, so it takes the poaching and braising listed here better than hake would. Given the yield, the frame is not optional: it makes a very good stock and it is more than half of what you paid for.
- LampreyA jawless, eel-like animal rather than a fish in the ordinary sense. It was a serious English dish for centuries and is now scarce and legally protected across much of its European range, while in the North American Great Lakes the same creature is an invasive pest. This entry is to be read as history.
- Mackerel and timeFourteen ways to dress it and not a word about freshness, because the page did not have to say it. Mackerel deteriorates faster than any other common fish. Buy it stiff and bright-eyed, cook it the day it is bought, and do not plan to keep it.
- GooseberriesThe sharpest-sounding dish here is the one still made. Green gooseberries cooked to a tart purée against an oily fish is a genuine and surviving English pairing, and rhubarb does the same job when gooseberries have gone over.
- Beurre noirButter taken past brown to the edge of burnt, with vinegar or lemon thrown in to stop it there. It is a matter of seconds at the end of the cooking, it cannot be made in advance, and the sharpness rather than the colour is the point of it.
A fish list of this length in a book about ordering dinner is a record of what ice and the railways could move. By the time this page was written, a household well inland could expect a fishmonger to produce John Dory, lamprey, mackerel, hake, herring and halibut, which is a logistical achievement rather than a culinary one, and the chapter is organised alphabetically precisely because the cook could not know in advance which of them would be on the slab. What the page cannot show is how unevenly that abundance would hold. The mackerel is still there and still cheap. The John Dory has become a restaurant fish. The lamprey, once grand enough to be sent as a gift, has retreated so far that most readers of this page will never see one.