Home › Red Mullet › Red Mullet
Red Mullet
179. Clean from the gills and small intestines, but leave the rest in the inside, fold in oiled paper, and gently bake in a small dish; make a sauce of the liquor that comes from the fish, with a piece of butter, a little flour, a little essence of anchovy, and a glass of sherry; give it a boil, and serve in a boat, and the fish in the paper cases.
A plain Victorian treatment of red mullet baked in paper, with a quick pan sauce made from the juices. Most of what needs translating is the vessel, the oven and the wine measure.
- The hinge: leave the liver inRemoving the gills and the lower intestine while keeping the liver is deliberate — the liver is what gives red mullet its distinctive flavour, and it melts into the cooking liquor that becomes the sauce. This only works with very fresh fish; if the mullet is more than a day or two off the boat, gut it fully and accept a milder dish.
- Oiled paperBaking parchment brushed with oil does the job of the original oiled kitchen paper. Fold it into a sealed parcel so the juices are trapped, and set the parcels in a shallow dish to catch anything that escapes.
- Oven heat"Gently bake" gives no temperature; a moderate oven, somewhere around 325-350F, suits the method. Small mullet of 6-8 oz need about 12-15 minutes; a 1 lb fish nearer 20. The flesh should just part from the backbone.
- Essence of anchovyA Victorian bottled seasoning, salty and slightly spiced. Anchovy paste is the closest current equivalent — start with half a teaspoon per portion of sauce, or use a teaspoon of colatura. Season the sauce only after the anchovy is in.
- A glass of sherryA Victorian wineglass is about 2 fl oz. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than a cream sherry, which will make the sauce cloying.
- The sauceButter and flour in roughly equal weight, cooked briefly, then let down with the collected fish liquor and the sherry. The liquor from two or three fish is only a few tablespoons, so keep the quantities small or thin with a little fish stock. The recipe asks for a single boil.
- Serving and yieldOne mullet per person, sent to table still in its parcel and opened at the plate so the aroma is not lost. The sauce boat is passed separately, as written.
Red mullet has been a luxury fish since antiquity — the Romans were notorious for paying extravagant sums for large specimens — and by the nineteenth century English cooks commonly cooked it with the liver left inside, a practice behind the nickname "the woodcock of the sea", by analogy with the game bird traditionally roasted undrawn. Cooking in oiled paper cases was one common English method: it keeps the delicate flesh from drying and, just as importantly for a Victorian kitchen, it saves every drop of the juices for the sauce. The combination of butter, flour, anchovy essence and sherry is a common mid-century English fish sauce, repeated with small variations across cookery books of the period.