Perch, Boiled
INGREDIENTS. of salt to each gallon of water.
Ib.
Scale the fish, take out the gills and clean it thoroughly; lay it in boiling water, salted as above, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. If the fish is very large, longer time must be allowed. Garnish with parsley, and serve with plain melted butter, or Dutch sauce. Perch do not preserve so good a flavour when stewed as when dressed in any other way. INGREDIENTS.—1/4 lb. of salt to each gallon of water.
TIME. Middling-sized perch, hour.
SEASONABLE from September to November.
Note. Tench may be boiled the same way, and served with the same sauces.
A plain poached freshwater fish, in the Victorian manner: heavily salted water, gentle heat, and a butter sauce at the table. Two things need attention before you start — the spines and the salt.
- Handle before you scalePerch carry sharp, stiff dorsal spines and spiky gill covers, and the scales are unusually hard and tightly set. Snip the dorsal fin off with scissors first, and consider skinning rather than scaling a large fish.
- The brineThe salt quantity has dropped out of this printing; only "of salt to each gallon of water" and a fragmentary "lb." survive. Beeton's boiled-fish recipes generally call for about a quarter pound (4 oz) of salt to the gallon, which is saltier than most modern poaching liquid; half that amount seasons the flesh well enough over ten minutes.
- Simmer, do not boilThe fish goes into water already at a boil, which is then dropped to a bare tremble. A rolling boil splits the skin and drives the flesh off the bones, and perch are delicate once cooked.
- The timingThe method gives ten minutes at a gentle simmer for a middling perch, though the separate TIME line (its fraction lost in this printing) reads as somewhat longer; judge by whether the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone at the thickest point. The recipe says only that a very large fish needs longer.
- Melted butter"Plain melted butter" in this book is a thickened butter sauce -- butter worked with a little flour and water into a smooth pouring sauce -- not simply butter run in a pan. Dutch sauce is the English name for the hollandaise family, made with egg yolks, butter and vinegar or lemon (this book's version also takes a little flour).
- TenchThe note holds, but tench have a long-standing reputation for a muddy taste, and keeping them in clean water for a day or two before cooking, or scalding and skinning them, is often recommended in older books.
- YieldOne middling perch per person, or two if small. Boiled freshwater fish wants plain steamed potatoes and nothing more assertive than the sauce.
Perch was a common table fish across inland Britain and Europe long before sea fish could be moved reliably by rail, and it kept a place in nineteenth-century household books partly for that reason. Perch spawn in spring, so the September-to-November season given here may reflect the fish's condition later in the year, though the book gives no reason. Tench, offered here as a substitute, belongs to the same world of pond and slow-river fish, and was valued more for availability than for flavour. Anglers today should check local regulations, since perch and tench are subject to close seasons and size limits in many waters.