Trout, Stewed
-INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 middling-sized trout, 1/2 1/2 onion cut in thin slices, a little parsley, 2 cloves, 1 blade of mace, 2 bay-leaves, a little thyme, salt and pepper to taste, 1 pint of medium stock, 1 glass of port wine, thickening of butter and flour. AVERAGE COST, 3s. Wash the fish very clean, and wipe it quite dry. Lay it in a stewpan, with all the ingredients but the butter and flour, and simmer gently for ½ hour, or rather more, should the fish be not quite done.
BOILED TROUT.
Take it out, strain the gravy, add the thickening and stir it over a sharp fire for 5 minutes; pour it over the trout, and serve.
TIME. According to size, hour or more.
SEASONABLE from May to September, and fatter from the middle to the end of August than at any other time.
Note. Trout may be served with anchovy or sauce, baked in buttered paper, or fried TRUFFLES, TO DRESS.
Reduce the ingredients for the Court bouillon quickly over a strong fire, the vegetables being sliced up; strain, cool and preserve for cooking fish, replacing the liquid consumed each time by some good white wine. Stuff the trout with a forcemeat made of the bread-crumbs, truffles, mushrooms, butter and herbs. The fish having been washed and dried, tie up the head, and simmer in the Court Court bouillon for 1/4 hour. Take it out, dip it in egg and bread-crumbs, fry, and serve up with tomato sauce.
TIME.- hour.
SEASONABLE from May to September.
Truffles à l'Italienne.-INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-5 or 6 truffles, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, 1 minced shalot, salt and pepper to taste, 2 oz. of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of good brown gravy, the juice of 1/2 lemon, cayenne to taste. AVERAGE COST, 38.6d.
Wash the truffles and cut them into slices about the size of a penny-piece; put them into a frying-pan, with the parsley, shalot, salt, pepper and 1 oz. of butter; stir them over the fire, that they may all be equally done, which will be in about 10 minutes, and drain off some of the butter; then add a little more fresh butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of good gravy, the juice of 1/2 lemon and a little cayenne; stir over the fire until the whole is on the point of boiling, when serve.
TIME.-Altogether, 20 minutes.
SEASONABLE from November to March.
A Victorian court-style stew: whole trout poached in stock and port, the liquor then strained and thickened into its own sauce. The Beeton timing is generous by modern standards, so judge doneness by the fish rather than the clock.
- The hinge: bare simmer, short timeA pair of trout of about 12 oz each are cooked through in 12-18 minutes at a liquid that barely trembles, and the flesh will lift cleanly from the backbone when done. A rolling boil splits the skin and shreds the fillets before the sauce is even strained.
- "Middling-sized" troutBeeton gives no weight; from the six-person yield a whole river trout of somewhere around 3/4 to 1 lb, gutted, head and tail on, is a reasonable reading. Two farmed rainbow trout of that weight serve six only as part of a larger meal; for six as a main course, allow one fish per person and scale the aromatics up by half.
- Medium stockBeeton's "medium stock" is a light unclarified household stock, veal or beef bones with root vegetables. A mild chicken stock, or a fish stock made from the trimmings, does the same work; avoid anything reduced or heavily salted, since the liquor is later thickened and concentrated.
- A glass of portA Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the measure was never fixed. Use a ruby port rather than tawny. The pint of stock is 20 fl oz Imperial, so about 2 1/2 US cups.
- Blade of maceA blade is a single dried piece of nutmeg aril, not ground mace. Ground mace can stand in, but the equivalence is rough -- start with a small pinch and taste; add it with the thickening rather than the stock so it does not turn muddy.
- Thickening of butter and flourThis is beurre manié butter and flour kneaded cold in equal parts, roughly 1 oz of each for a pint of liquor. Whisk it into the strained gravy off the heat, then return to a brisk heat for the five minutes Beeton allows, which cooks out the raw flour taste.
- ServingLift the fish out on a fish slice or two spatulas and keep it warm under buttered paper while the sauce finishes, or it will cool through in the four or five minutes the thickening takes.
- Cost and seasonThe 3s. is a mid-Victorian shop price and has no modern meaning. The May-to-September season reflects wild brown trout and close seasons; farmed trout is available year round.
Stewing a whole fish in stock with port, cloves, mace and bay belongs to an older English tradition than the plain grilled trout of the twentieth century: spiced wine liquors for freshwater fish run back through eighteenth-century cookery to the medieval taste for fish served in a dark, sweet-spiced sauce. Beeton's seasonal note is the giveaway that she is writing about wild fish - trout taken from rivers under close-season rules, at their fattest in late August before spawning - in a period when brown trout were a sporting catch or a local market fish rather than a commodity. Commercial rainbow trout farming, which put trout in every fishmonger's window year round, came much later, and it is the main reason a recipe like this now reads as elaborate treatment for an everyday fish.