Carp, Stewed
INGREDIENTS.-1 carp, salt, stock, 2 onions, 6 cloves, 12 peppercorns, 1 blade of mace, 1/4 pint of port wine, the juice of 1/2 lemon, cayenne and salt to taste, a faggot of savoury herbs.
Scale the fish, clean it nicely, and, if very large, divide it; lay it in the stewpan, after having rubbed a little salt on it, and put in sufficient stock to cover it; add the herbs, onions and spices, and stew gently for 1 1/4 hour, or rather more should it be very large. Dish up the fish with great care, strain the liquor, and add to it the port wine, lemon-juice and cayenne; give one boil, pour it over the fish and serve.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Note. This fish can be boiled plain and served with parsley and butter. Chub and Char may be cooked in the same manner as the above, as also Dace and Roach.
A Victorian freshwater-fish stew that finishes as its own sauce. Two things need attention before you start: the cooking time, and the fact that carp needs handling the recipe takes for granted.
- The hour is far too longThe hour is long -- carp is firm but it still cooks through in roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare simmer — 20 to 30 minutes for a whole 3-4 lb fish. An hour is likely to leave it dry. Note that the recipe adds time rather than subtracting it for a big fish: '1 hour, or rather more should it be very large.'
- Rid the fish of mud firstWild carp carries an earthy note in the skin and the dark lateral flesh. Skinning, or a soak of an hour in salted or lightly acidulated water, deals with most of it. Farmed mirror carp from a fishmonger is much milder.
- Quarter pint of portAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. A ruby port is a reasonable modern choice; the 'one boil' after adding it will also drive off some of the raw spirit, so let it bubble a full minute rather than a token second.
- A faggot of savoury herbsA tied bundle — parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, sometimes a strip of celery. Tie it with string so it lifts out whole before straining.
- Blade of maceOne dried outer sheath from a nutmeg, still sold whole in spice shops. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though it will cloud the strained liquor.
- Stock to coverA light fish or vegetable stock, not beef. It should barely cover the fish, since it becomes the sauce and wants concentration rather than dilution.
- Lifting it out whole"Dish up the fish with great care" is the real instruction. Poach it on a folded strip of cheesecloth or a rack laid in the pan and it comes out intact; lift a hot stewed carp with a spatula alone and it breaks along the ribs.
- Yield and the substitutionsA 3-4 lb carp feeds four. Chub, dace and roach are rarely sold today; Arctic char is easy to find but far more delicate, so treat it as a 10-minute poach at most.
Carp was a pond fish before it was a river fish — monastic and manorial stew ponds kept it alive and to hand through the winter, and it reached Britain from continental Europe in the late medieval period, generally traced to the fifteenth century. By Mrs Beeton's day it had slipped down the social scale in England, kept alive mainly by anglers and by the Jewish and central European kitchens that never abandoned it, while the French and Germans went on stewing it in red wine. The port, cloves, mace and cayenne here are the older English treatment of coarse freshwater fish: a dark, spiced, fortified-wine sauce that flatters the earthy flesh rather than pretending it is sole. The closing list of chub, char, dace and roach is a reminder that the Victorian fishmonger's slab held river fish that have almost entirely vanished from commerce.