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TO BAKE PIKE (OTHERWISE JACK) OR BREAM. 139. Scale the fish, and open as near the throat as possible, then clean and stuff it with the following:-grated bread, herbs, anchovies, oysters, suet, salt, pepper, mace, half a pint of cream, four yolks of eggs: mix all over the fire till it thickens, then put into the fish and sew it up; put butter over it in little bits, and bake it. Serve sauce of gravy, butter, and anchovy. Or, make a stuffing with bread crumbs, herbs, salt, pepper, a chopped anchovy, and a little butter; put it in, place a buttered paper under and over the fish; one from three to four lbs. will require an hour's baking in rather a slow oven. Serve with a good gravy nicely flavoured.
FLOUNDERS. 140. TO FRY.- Let them be rubbed with salt inside and out, and lie two hours to give them some firmness. Dip them into egg; cover with crumbs and fry them. 141. WATER SOUCHY. - Stew two or three flounders, some parsley leaves and roots, thirty peppercorns, and a quart of water, till the fish are boiled to pieces; pulp them through a sieve. Set over the fire the pulped fish, the liquor that boiled them, some perch, tench, or flounders, and some fresh leaves and roots of parsley; simmer all till done enough, then serve in a deep dish. Slices of bread and butter are to be sent to table, to eat with the souchy.
Three related entries: a stuffed baked pike or bream, fried flounders, and water souchy, the fish-and-parsley broth once standard in Thames-side taverns. None of the quantities for the stuffing are given, so treat the ingredient list as a proportion sketch rather than a formula.
- Jack and pike"Jack" is simply a smaller pike; both are the same fish. Pike is rarely sold in shops now, so any firm freshwater or lean white fish of 3-4 lb will take this treatment. Pike carries fine forked (Y-shaped) bones through the flesh, which may be one reason it so often appears stuffed and baked whole rather than filleted.
- "Rather a slow oven"Read that as 300-325F. A whole stuffed fish of 3-4 lb may well be done before the stated hour at that heat; check the thickest part behind the head, and because the cavity is filled with an egg-and-cream stuffing take the centre to about 145F rather than pulling it rare.
- The first stuffing is a custardHalf a pint of cream with four egg yolks, thickened over the fire, is a thick panade-custard bound with the crumbs. Keep the heat low and stir constantly; if the yolks catch, the mixture will curdle and weep in the oven. Cool it before it goes into the fish.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. With four yolks, crumbs, suet and oysters that makes a generous amount of forcemeat, enough for a fish larger than 4 lb; scale down for a smaller one.
- Suet and anchoviesBeef suet from a butcher, grated or finely chopped, gives the richness; cold butter can stand in. The anchovies here are salt-cured whole fish, so a tinned fillet or two mashed to paste is the modern equivalent, and less salt is then needed elsewhere.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered on both sides, above and below the fish. It does the work of a lid, keeping the skin from splitting and the stuffing from drying, and it makes lifting the cooked fish out in one piece possible.
- Two hours in saltSalting flounders before frying draws surface moisture and firms the flesh. Two hours is more than a thin flat fish needs today; 20-30 minutes with a light sprinkle, then patted dry, achieves the same firmness without over-seasoning.
- Souchy: strain the pulpBoiling flounders to pieces and pushing them through a sieve carries fine bones with them if you are rough. Push gently with the back of a ladle and discard whatever will not go through easily, then strain the broth again through muslin before the second fish goes in.
- Second cooking, second timingThe whole fish added to the finished broth needs only the minutes it takes to cook through, not the long simmer the first batch had. Serve the souchy in its liquor in a deep dish or bowls; the recipe sends slices of bread and butter to table with it, brown bread being the usual choice at the Thames taverns.
- YieldThe baked pike serves four to six. Two or three flounders in a quart of water makes a light first course for four.
Water souchy takes its name from the Dutch waterzootje, a plain simmer of fish in its own broth, and the name and dish appear in England by the eighteenth century, becoming particularly associated with the lower Thames. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the taverns at Greenwich and Blackwall were known for souchy made with river fish such as flounder and eel, served in a deep dish with brown bread and butter, and Londoners went downriver expressly to eat it. The baked pike belongs to an older English tradition, in which a large, bony freshwater fish was stuffed with a rich forcemeat of crumbs, suet and oysters because its own flesh was lean and dry; oysters were cheap enough in this period to be used as a seasoning rather than a luxury.