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Dressing River Fish
128. TO STEW.-Scald and clean, take care of the roe, &c., lay the fish in a stew-pan with a rich beef-gravy, an onion, eight cloves, a dessert-spoonful of Jamaica pepper, the same of black, add port-wine to the extent of a fourth part of the quantity of gravy (cider may do), simmer closely covered. When nearly done, add two anchovies chopped fine, a dessert-spoonful of made mustard, and some fine walnut ketchup, a bit of butter rolled in flour; shake it, and let the gravy boil a few minutes. Serve with sippets of fried bread, the roe fried, and a good deal of horseradish and lemon. 129. To BAKE.-Clean a large carp; put in a stuffing as for veal (see Forcemeat): sew it up, brush it all over with yolk of egg, and add plenty of crumbs; then drop on the top some oiled butter to baste it; place the carp in a deep earthen dish, with a pint of stock, a few sliced onions, some bay-leaves, a fagot of herbs (such as basil, thyme, parsley, and both sorts of marjoram), half a pint of port-wine, and six anchovies; cover over the pan, and bake it an hour. Let it be done before it is wanted. Pour the liquor from it, and keep the fish hot while you heat up the liquor with a good piece of butter rolled in flour, a tea-spoonful of mustard, a little Cayenne, and a spoonful of soy. Serve the fish on the dish, garnish with lemon, parsley, and horseradish, and put the gravy into the sauce-tureen. EELS. 130. TO SPITCиcock. - Take one or two large eels, leave the skin on, open them on the belly side, cut them into pieces of three inches long, clean nicely and wipe them dry, and then wet them with beaten egg, and strew over on both sides chopped parsley, pepper, salt, a very little sage, and a bit of mace pounded fine and mixed with the seasoning; rub the gridiron with a bit of suet, and broil the fish of a fine colour. Serve with anchovy and butter for sauce. 131. TO FRY.-If small, should be curled round and fried, being first dipped into egg and crumbs of bread. If large, they should be skinned and cut into lengths, after which they are treated like the small ones. 132. To BOIL.----The small ones are best. Do them in a small quantity of water, with a good deal of parsley, which should be served up with them and the liquor. Serve chopped parsley and butter for sauce.
Time required, from ten to fifteen minutes. 133. TO COLLAR. -Bone a large eel, but do not skin it; mix pepper, salt, mace, allspice, and a clove or two, in the finest powder, and rub over the whole inside; roll it tight and bind with a coarse tape; boil in salt and water till done, then add vinegar, and when cold keep the collar in pickle. Serve it either whole or in slices. Chopped sage, parsley, and a little thyme, knotted marjoram, and savoury, mixed with the spices, greatly improve the taste. 134. TO STEW.-Cut them in short pieces; fry them a little, then put them in a stew-pan and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg; just cover with gravy, then put in one onion stuck with eight cloves, some mace, lemon-peel, and a little horseradish; when half done add a handful of parsley cut small, a quarter of a pint of port-wine, and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter. 135. EEL PIE.- Cut the eels in lengths of two or three inches, season with pepper and salt, and place in the dish with some bits of butter and a little water, and cover it with puff paste.
A run of mid-Victorian freshwater fish methods, written for cooks who bought carp, tench and eels live and worked from a well-stocked store cupboard. The seasonings are the interesting part; the fish handling needs the most translation.
- The fish itselfThese methods assume pond carp and river eels, which can carry a muddy flavour from their feeding ground. The old remedy was to keep the fish in clean water for a day or two before killing; the practical modern equivalent is to buy farmed carp or eel from a fishmonger who can vouch for it, or substitute a firm freshwater fish such as trout or a thick fillet of pike.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates the skin and eyes and is dangerous if it gets into a cut. It is destroyed completely by cooking, so all these dishes are safe once done, but wear gloves when boning and skinning, and wash board and knife before they touch anything else.
- Jamaica pepper and made mustardJamaica pepper is allspice; a dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons. "Made mustard" is prepared mustard from the jar rather than dry powder, and English mustard is the likely strength.
- Walnut ketchup and soyWalnut ketchup is a thin, dark, spiced condiment of green walnuts, vinegar and anchovy, still made in Britain but easily missed on a shelf. Mushroom ketchup is the nearest substitute; the "spoonful of soy" is soy sauce, used here as a colouring and salting agent, so hold back on added salt until the sauce is finished.
- Baking the carpNo oven heat is given. Bake covered at around 350F; an hour suits a carp of 3-4 lb, but check that the flesh at the thickest point parts cleanly from the backbone rather than trusting the clock.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre mani— equal weights of soft butter and flour worked together, then whisked into the hot liquor in small pieces. Let it boil a couple of minutes to lose the raw flour taste, as the recipe directs.
- Sippets and the fagotSippets are small triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter and set round the dish. A fagot of herbs is a bundle tied with string so it can be lifted out whole; "both sorts of marjoram" means sweet (knotted) marjoram and pot marjoram, and ordinary oregano will stand in for the latter.
- SpitchcockingThe eel is split, cut into three-inch lengths, egged, herbed and grilled skin-on. A very hot grill or a ridged pan is wanted, three to four minutes a side; eel is fatty and will flare, so keep it a little further from the heat than you would a lean fish.
- Boiling timesTen to fifteen minutes suits whole small eels in their skins. Skinned pieces or fillets need far less \flesh will be opaque and firm in five or six minutes.
- Collared eel and keepingBoil, roll and slice the collar by all means, but ignore the instruction to keep it standing in pickle. The vinegar is added after cooking and its strength is unmeasured, which is not a reliable preserve for a low-acid, high-protein food; treat the finished collar as a cooked dish, refrigerate it, and eat it within two or three days.
- YieldThe stewed and baked fish are dressed whole and serve four to six depending on the size of the fish. A pound of eel before boning is about right for two as a main course.
Freshwater fish held a place in British cookery long after sea fish became easy to move inland by rail, largely because carp and tench were pond stock on estates and monastic sites and eels ran in every slow river and tidal creek. The heavy seasoning here — port, anchovy, walnut ketchup, soy, mustard, cayenne — is not incidental: rich brown sauces were the standard eighteenth- and nineteenth-century answer to the soft, sometimes earthy flesh of pond fish, and the same battery of store-cupboard condiments turns up in venison and hare sauces of the period. Eels were the cheaper and far more common of the two in the mid-1800s, sold live from tubs in London streets and eaten stewed, jellied or in the pie that closes this section. "Spitchcock" is generally traced to the same word-family as "spatchcock", both describing a bird or fish split open for the grill, though the etymology has never been settled.