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Redfish, Whitefish or Trout in Aspic Jelly

An ornamental dish. Border moulds are needed; common jelly moulds will do. Take the boiled fish ice-cold from the liquor it was boiled in, wipe off with a napkin dipped in hot water, peel off the skin; then with broad knives split the fish down the back, remove the bone and lay the two fillets on a cutting board. It makes the handsomest dish to have a red or pink or yellow-fleshed fish to alternate with the white.

Get ready a pan of water, ice and salt (freezing mixture) to dip the moulds in to set the jelly quickly. Cut the fishes in finger-like strips. Flavor some melted jelly with chili vinegar and table sauce poured off clear, then coat the moulds with it by turning a little around in them till set. Place the pieces of fish in upright order around the mould with something to make ornamental stripes betwixt each piece--it may be the chopped red meat of lobster, a fine line of chopped yolk of egg, picked shrimps, or chopped parsley or tender green celery leaves.

One side of the mould has to be finished at a time, a little jelly poured over and allowed to set in the ice water, to be then turned over and the other side lined. With a number of moulds to work on there is no time lost. For the inside filling mix aspic jelly and thick mayonaise in about equal quantities, and beat it light on ice; just before it sets stir in chopped celery or white lettuce, or both, and when the fish-lined moulds are filled--or the hollow border if border moulds be used--let them set in a cold place till to be served. The dishes should be garnished with a border of picked leaves of water cress, and something to show it is fish, as shrimps or pieces of lobster, or better still, some of the smallest fish obtainable, incased in clear jelly whole, like oysters in aspic, and laid in order around. A good deal of deteriorated and ill-savored food is sent to hotel tables through the semi-accidental fermentation of soup stocks, liquors in which fish are left to cool, and the like, and never so much as when the preparation of a banquet requires some things to be made a good while before. This is not through want of skill in making, but want of care in keeping. It is next to impossible for a large kettle of fish boiled over night, or a large body of soup stock to remain unchanged till next day, a sort of "salt-rising" fermentation sets in. This is not to run down hotel cookery but point the remedy. Always cool off soup stock in several shallow pans and stir once in a while, and never set fish away in the kettle more than one fish deep; and the kettle should be tipped once or twice while cooling to expel the heat from the center. After that there is no risk of a bad taste.

And, before we get too far from green sauce: There is a book in the British museum all about trout, that was written by a cook and published within a few years of Izaak Walton's Complete Angler. In a rhyming preface the author says: "Forty years in ambassadors' kitchens I Learned the art of cookery." And he has "trout pie to eat hot," and "trout pie to eat cold," and "cold trout in armour of green," in which we find the same old pounded herbs, or ravigote, mixed with butter and seasonings, and spread smoothly all over the cold boiled fish, which is then ornamented with thin sliced pickles to imitate scales and gills. This is done with truffle slices in modern French cookery, and the dish goes by another name.

Another dish of fish in armor of green, necessary for those to be posted in who would get up novel, if very old, dishes for banquets is: Mix thick mayonaise with a third as much aspic jelly and color it green with the juice from pounded spinach leaves. When so nearly set as not to run spread it evenly over a cold boiled fish raised on a bread or chopped celery foundation, and decorate with truffles, whole yolks of eggs, aspic jelly or sliced or quartered lemons.

For if the salad makers and their work had not some strange charm of mystery for the public why should the novelists make so much use of the man who can make a mayonaise?

That man is nearly ubiquitous in English fiction--if we had time to follow him--not that mayonaise is always as plainly mentioned as in the instance in our opening column, but it is implied when not named as one of the branches of occult knowledge that is to give that personage, who is oftenest a valet, a hold upon your imagination.

The man who can make a mayonaise, whom every reader knows, is done up in the smallest parcel perhaps in Felix Holt: "Oh! one of those wonderful Southern fellows that make one's life easy. He's of no country in particular. I don't know whether he's most of a Jew, a Greek, an Italian, or a Spaniard. He speaks five or six languages, one as well as another. He's cook, valet, major-domo, and secretary all in one; and what's more, he's an affectionate fellow--I can trust to his attachment. That's a sort of human specimen that doesn't grow here in England, I fancy. * * * * The old servants will have to put up with my man Dominic, who will show them how to cook and do everything else, in a way that will rather astonish them." Here he crops out in Thackeray's Virginians: "Gumbo had a hundred accomplishments. * * * * He was great at cooking many of his Virginian dishes, and learned many new culinary secrets from my Lord's French man" Now we all know those secrets were how to make a mayonaise or two, but the authors do not always know as much as their characters--how valuable must have been the salad-making knowlege possessed by Count Fosco, in the Woman in White--be an Italian, a Count, and with domestic proclivities--but which the author forgot to give to the world!

These men of extraordinary knowledge have to do other things than make strange dishes for the French reader. The same sort of valet or majordomo, in Dumas' Queen's Necklace, alone knows where there is but just one bottle of a priceless wine left in the cellar of a distant chateau, and manages to steal it in time for a royal guest in so many hours and minutes by the clock. With all his acquaintance with various dishes the author of the Virginians missed it badly when in going over all he could think of that the Colonists had to eat he quite forgot chicken salad. Let us see: "You know what I mean--shad and salmon and rockfish and roedeer and hogs and buffalos and bisons. * * Countless quantities of shad and salmon, wild geese, wild swans, pigeons and plovers, and myraids of canvas-backed ducks. * * The gumbo was perfection, the shad were rich and fresh--stewed terrapins--sweets and flans--Mr. Justice, you love woodcock pie? * * And now the sweets and pudding are come, of which I can give you a list if you like; but what young lady cares for the puddings of to-day, much more for those which were eaten a hundred years ago?"

It is of no use looking. There are some grand Virginian feasts but Hamlet is left out. There is cold roast turkey, but no Virginian chicken or turkey salad.

It is pretty certain if Madam Esmond, who had "such a hand for light pastry," made chicken salad in Virginia a hundred years ago, the chicken was first cut in bits about an inch long, and then pulled apart in shreds, for that is the way American house-wives of to-day say it should be done; but then that lady had plenty of help. There is no slower operation than pulling chicken meat into fine shreds, and hotel cooks can't.

Fowls to be cooked should always be sorted, and generally be boiled separately--the old and the young--for while some will be done in less than an hour others take 4 or 5 hours. To find when they are tender lift from the boiling liquor with a fork and pinch the flesh of the drumstick. To know when they are young, before cooking, try the point of the breast bone. When fowls have done growing the entire breast bone hardens, before that it can be bent. A more reliable test is, try if you can push your thumb through the thin skin that stretches between the joint of the wings. It is quite essential to make the matter of age sure before boiling a boned fowl done up in cloth.