Whiting, Broiled
INGREDIENTS. -Salt and water; flour. AVERAGE COST, 4d. to 8d. each.
Wash the whiting in salt and water, wipe them thoroughly, and let them remain them well, and broil over a very clear fire.
Serve with maître d'hôtel sauce, or plain melted butter (see Sauces). Be careful to preserve the liver, as by some it is considered to be very delicate. the cloth to absorb all moisture. Flour TIME.-5 minutes for a small whiting.
SEASONABLE all the year, but best from October to March.
Whiting, &c., Carving of. - Whiting, pike, haddock and other fish, when of large size, may be carved in the same manner as salmon. When of medium size, they may be cut through, bone and all, and helped in nice pieces, a middlingsized whiting serving for two slices, and when small, a fish is given to each person.
The text as printed here is scrambled — two lines of type have been transposed, so the sequence of the instructions has to be reconstructed. Read it as: wash in salt and water, wipe thoroughly, lay on a cloth to absorb all moisture, flour well, then broil over a very clear fire.
- What "broil" means hereIn Mrs Beeton's kitchen this is cooking over a clear, flameless bed of coals on a gridiron, not under an overhead element. A very hot ridged grill pan or a charcoal grill burned down to embers gives the same effect; a domestic overhead broiler works but will not colour the skin the same way.
- "A very clear fire"Clear means no smoke and no flaring — coals settled to grey ash. Whiting is lean and thin-fleshed, so smoke and flame taint it immediately and the flour coating will scorch before the fish is through.
- The flour coatingThe fish must be genuinely dry before flouring or the coating turns to paste and sticks to the bars. That is the point of the cloth. Grease the gridiron as well.
- TimingFive minutes is the total for a small whiting, turned once — roughly two to three minutes a side. Whiting is a delicate, flaky fish that dries out fast; take it off when the flesh just parts from the backbone.
- The fish itselfWhiting (Merlangius merlangus) is common in British fishmongers and rare in the United States, where "whiting" usually means a different species altogether. Any small, lean, white round fish of about 8-12 oz — small haddock, small hake, pollack — behaves the same on a grill.
- The liverWhiting were commonly sold and cooked whole in this period, sometimes curled with the tail fastened into the mouth or eye, and with the liver left in. Fish sold gutted today will not have it. If you buy ungutted fish and want to follow the instruction, the liver is cooked inside the body cavity.
- Maître d'hôtel sauceMaitre d'hotel sauce -- Beeton gives both a hot maitre d'hotel sauce, butter with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and a cold maitre d'hotel butter worked to a paste and sliced onto the hot fish; the direction here points to the sauce. "Plain melted butter" in Beeton is a flour-thickened butter sauce, closer to a thin bechamel made with water than to drawn butter.
- Cost and seasonThe 4d. to 8d. each is the book's own Victorian retail price and tells you only that whiting was an everyday fish. The book gives October to March as the season, when the fish are in best condition.
- ServingThe carving note attached to the entry gives the yield: a small whiting is one portion, a medium one serves two, cut straight across through the bone.
Whiting was among the cheaper sea fish on the Victorian table and was often recommended for invalids and children -- light, lean, easily digested, and free of the oiliness of herring or mackerel. Broiling over coals was one standard treatment for small whole fish in kitchens with a range and gridiron, and required no fat to be heated; the flouring step, which recurs in Beeton for grilled and fried fish alike, dries the surface and gives it something to brown. The instruction to preserve the liver reflects the period practice of serving small fish whole and ungutted.