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Trout, Stuffed, Fried
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. -A fine trout, a little bread-crumb and butter, 2 oz. of truffles, 6 button-mushrooms, 1 teaspoonful of minced thyme, parsley and chervil; for the Court bouillon, a quart of water, a pint of white wine vinegar, 1 large carrot, onion and parsnip, a small head of celery, a little thyme, parsley, chervil and salt, 2 bayleaves, 2 oz. of butter. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
SEASONABLE from November to March.
This is one of Beeton's ingredient headnotes: quantities, cost and season, with the method carried elsewhere in the entry. What survives here still tells you a good deal about how the dish was meant to work.
- No method is given hereThe page as printed lists only the ingredients, average cost and season. Treat it as a shopping list and a set of proportions rather than a set of instructions; you will need a current recipe for stuffed trout to fill in the timings.
- A fine troutNo weight is given. To feed four it would need to be a whole fish rather than a pair of small ones; something in the region of 1.5-2 lb is a reasonable modern guess, left on the bone so it holds together when stuffed.
- The court bouillon is not the frying liquidThe separate list of a quart of water with a pint of white wine vinegar and aromatics points to an acidulated poaching liquor used before the fish is fried, though the method is not printed on this page. Standard practice is to simmer the vegetables and herbs first and let the liquor cool before the fish goes in, since fish dropped into boiling liquid tends to split.
- Truffles and mushroomsTwo ounces is about 57 g of truffle, a serious outlay today and a mark of a company dish then; the recipe does not say whether fresh or preserved. Finely chopped dried mushrooms plus a little truffle oil will not taste the same but will carry the stuffing; the six button mushrooms give texture and moisture as much as flavour.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh and not interchangeable with parsley; it is faintly aniseed. Tarragon in half quantity is the nearest common substitute. The same thyme, parsley and chervil mixture is called for in both the stuffing and the bouillon.
- Bread-crumb and butterNo quantity is given for either. Use enough soft white crumb, bound with melted butter, to fill the cavity without packing it tight; a generous cup of fresh crumbs will fill a medium whole trout.
- SeasonNovember to March sits outside the traditional trout season and matches the black truffle window, which suggests the truffles rather than the fish governed the dating.
- CostThree shillings and sixpence was a substantial sum for a dinner dish for four, and the two ounces of truffle will have accounted for a good deal of it. Beeton's costings are useful chiefly as a guide to which recipes were everyday and which were for entertaining.
Beeton's alphabetical fish entries were written for a household that bought whole freshwater fish. The court bouillon -- literally a "short broth", a quickly made acidulated vegetable stock -- is a French technique that appears in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onwards, valued because the acid firms fish flesh and helps keep it from breaking up. The truffles place this among the dinner-party recipes: imported truffle was one of the clearest ways to mark a dish as company food, and the November-to-March window given here matches the truffle rather than the fish. Stuffing and frying a whole trout, rather than simply grilling it, reflects the same impulse -- an ordinary river fish dressed up for the table.