Mullet, Red
INGREDIENTS. -Oiled paper, thickening of butter and flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, 1 glass of sherry, cayenne and salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, from 1s. to 1s. 6d. each.
Clean the fish, take out the gills, but leave the inside, fold in oiled paper and bake them gently. When done, take the liquor that flows from the fish, add a thickening of butter kneaded with flour ; put in the other ingredients, and let it boil for 2 minutes. Serve the sauce in a tureen, and the fish either with or without the paper cases.
TIME. About 25 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time, but more plentiful in summer.
Note. Red mullet may be broiled, and should be folded in oiled paper, the same as in the preceding recipe, and seasoned with pepper and salt. They may be served without sauce in their paper cases; but if any is required use melted butter, Italian or anchovy sauce. They should never be plain boiled.
MUSHROOM KETCHUP.
A whole fish baked in an oiled paper case, with a sauce built from the juices that collect inside it. The paper is not decorative — it is the cooking vessel, and everything the sauce depends on is trapped in it.
- Oiled paperUse baking parchment brushed generously with oil, or foil lined with parchment. The seal matters more than the material: crimp the edges tightly so no liquor escapes, since that liquor is the whole basis of the sauce.
- "Bake them gently"The book gives no temperature; a moderate oven, in the region of 325-350F, answers to it. A red mullet of 8-12 oz may well be done in under the 25 minutes given here; the flesh should just part from the backbone at the thickest point.
- "Leave the inside"This is deliberate, not an oversight. Red mullet was traditionally cooked ungutted for the sake of the liver, which melts into the juices. If that does not appeal, remove the gut and keep only the liver, or gut the fish entirely and accept a thinner sauce.
- Thickening of butter and flourBeurre manié — equal weights of soft butter and flour kneaded to a paste. About 2 teaspoons of each is enough for the juices of two fish. Whisk it in off the heat in small pieces, then bring to a boil for the two minutes specified so the flour loses its rawness.
- A glass of sherryA Victorian wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz. Use a dry amontillado or fino; a cream sherry will make the sauce cloying against the anchovy.
- Anchovy sauceThe bottled Victorian condiment is much less common than it was, though still made. Substitute about a quarter teaspoon of anchovy paste, or one mashed salted anchovy fillet, and salt at the end rather than the start.
- YieldOne fish per person as a first course; two small ones each as a main. The sauce quantities given here suit two to three fish.
- "They should never be plain boiled"Sound advice, and the reason for the paper. Red mullet is a lean, delicately flavoured fish whose character leaches straight into water.
Red mullet has been a luxury fish since antiquity — the Roman mullus was notoriously expensive, and Latin writers dwell on diners watching the fish change colour as it died. The habit of cooking it ungutted is often said to lie behind the nickname "the woodcock of the sea", by analogy with the game bird traditionally roasted with its trail left in and spread on toast. Cooking in oiled paper, which the French call en papillote, suited such fish precisely because nothing was lost: the case went to the table and was opened there. The price Mrs Beeton quotes, a shilling to eighteen pence for a single fish, marks it as a dish for a household with money, at a time when a great deal of fish was sold by the pound for pennies.