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Hot Burgundy
Take half a pint of good Burgundy wine, put it to boil with two cloves, and a dust of mixed spice, sweeten to taste with some powdered sugar. If you like add a quarter of the quantity of water to the wine before boiling. Creme de Poisson a la Roi Albert Take a fresh raw whiting, fillet it, and pass the flesh through a wire sieve. For a small dish take four ounces of the fish, mix them lightly with four tablespoonfuls of very thick cream, adding pepper and salt. Fill an oval ring mold, and steam gently for twenty minutes, under buttered paper. Have some marine crayfish boiled, shell the tails, cut them in pieces, removing the black line inside. Cut three truffles into thick slices, heat them and the crayfish in some ordinary white sauce, enriched with the yolk of a raw egg, pepper and salt, and one dessertspoonful of tarragon vinegar. This must not be allowed to boil. When the cream is turned out into a hot silver dish, pour the ragout into the center, and put a hot lid on. This dish has been composed by a Scotch lady in honor of the King of the Belgians. Not every cook can manage the cream, but the proportions are exact, and so is the time.
Two separate items run together on the page: a mulled Burgundy, and an elaborate steamed fish cream with a shellfish ragout. The second is the one that needs attention.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups — enough hot wine for two small glasses. With the optional quarter-quantity of water it stretches to about 12 fl oz.
- Mixed spiceA British blend, still sold under that name: mostly cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, allspice and ginger. Pumpkin-pie spice is the nearest supermarket equivalent. A "dust" suggests no more than a pinch.
- Do not actually boil the wineThe recipe says "put it to boil", but it is usually read as bringing the wine to the point of steaming. Held at a rolling boil, wine loses alcohol and aroma and can taste flat and stewed. Bring it just to the edge of a simmer with the cloves, then take it off.
- Whiting, and what to use insteadWhiting is a small, very lean, delicately flavoured member of the cod family. Any lean white fish with no oil in it will behave the same way in the mousse — haddock, hake, pollock, sole. Oily fish will not set cleanly.
- "Pass through a wire sieve"This is the pre-processor method of making a fish farce: pound the raw flesh, then push it through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon to remove every scrap of sinew. A food processor does it in seconds, but keep the fish and bowl cold or the mixture will break when the cream goes in.
- Very thick creamBritish double cream, roughly 48 per cent fat. US heavy cream at 36 per cent is thinner and the mousse will be looser; use scant tablespoons if that is all you have.
- Steaming the moldButter a small oval ring mold, cover with buttered parchment, and set it in a covered pan over — not in — gently simmering water. Twenty minutes at a bare simmer; hard boiling will curdle it. It is done when the center is just firm to a fingertip.
- Marine crayfishNot the freshwater crawfish of Louisiana. In older British cookery this generally means the sea crayfish or langouste — spiny lobster — though langoustines (Dublin Bay prawns) or lobster tail give the same effect. The "black line inside" is the intestinal tract; pull it out before slicing.
- The egg yolk sauceThe yolk is a liaison, not a thickener to be cooked out. Once it goes into the white sauce the pan must stay below a simmer or the sauce will scramble and the tarragon vinegar will make it split faster. Warm the truffle and shellfish through and serve immediately.
- YieldFour ounces of fish and a ring mold of this size makes a first course for two, three at a stretch — "a small dish", as the original says. Scale the cream with the fish, not by eye.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, gathering recipes from Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion of 1914; sales went to relief funds. That context explains the odd pairing on this page — a plain domestic mulled wine of the kind made all over northern Europe in winter, sitting beside a luxurious composed dish credited here to a Scotch lady. King Albert I, the "Roi Albert" of the title, was the Belgian sovereign who stayed with his army behind the Yser during the war and became something close to a hero in the British press, which is why a Scotch lady would think to name a fish cream after him. The dish itself has the look of grand hotel cooking of the period: a sieved raw-fish mousseline bound only with cream, steamed in a ring, with a shellfish and truffle ragout poured into the well — the same technique behind the mousselines and quenelles that dominated grand-restaurant menus of the period. The closing line, that not every cook can manage the cream, is honest; a mousseline of this kind stands or falls on the fat content of the cream and the temperature of the bowl.