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Turbot, Brill, or Plaice
151. TO BOIL. - The turbot-kettle must be of a proper size, and in the nicest order. Do not skin the fish, as I have known done by an ignorant cook. Set it in cold water sufficient to cover it completely, throw a handful of salt and a glass of vinegar into it, and let it gradually boil; be careful that no blacks fall; but skim it well, and thereby preserve the beauty of the colour. Sprinkle the belly, or white side, with the roe of the lobster, and turn that side up. Serve it garnished with a complete fringe of curled parsley, lemon, and horseradish. The sauce should be the finest lobster, shrimp, or anchovy, and plain butter, served plentifully in separate tureens. Time, about two minutes per pound. 152. TO FRY.-Sprinkle with salt, and keep twenty-four hours; then wash and wipe it dry, wet over with egg, and cover with crumbs of bread; make some lard, or fine dripping, and two large spoonsful of vinegar boiling hot; lay the fish in, and fry it a fine colour, drain it from the fat, and serve with fried parsley round, and anchovy sauco. This mode is particularly adapted for plaice.
SOLES. 153. Soles are skinned, and may be boiled in the same way as turbot. They are served with plain butter, or parsley and butter. Time, about five or six minutes per fish. 154. TO FRY. -Skin them, and dry carefully with a cloth; then dip in egg and bread-crumb, and fry as directed in par. 114. 155. AS CUTLETS.-Take two or three soles, separate the flesh from the backbone, and take off the heads, fins, and tail. Sprinkle the inside with salt, roll them up tight from the tail end upwards, and fasten with small skewers. If large or of middling size, put half a fish in cach roll-small do not answer. Dip them into yolks of eggs, and cover with crumbs. Do the egg over them again, and then put more crumbs, and fry them a beautiful colour in lard, or, for fast-days, in clarified butter. 156. SOLE PIE.-Split some soles from the bones, and cut the fins close; season with a mixture of salt, pepper, a little nutmeg and pounded mace, and put them in layers, with oysters. They eat excellently. A pair of middling-sized ones will do, and half a hundred of oysters. Put in the dish the oyster-liquor, two or three spoonfuls of broth, and some butter; cover with paste. When the pie comes home, pour in a cupful of thick cream.
COD-FISH. 157. To BOIL. - Some people boil the cod whole; but a large head and shoulders contain all the parts that it is proper to dress, the thinner parts being overdone and tasteless before the thick are ready. But as the whole fish may be purchased at times more reasonably, the lower half may be sprinkled with salt, and hung up, when it will be in high perfection in one or two days. Or, it may be made more salt, and served with egg sauce, potatoes, and parsnips, as salt-fish. Cod, when small, is usually very cheap. If boiled quite fresh, it is watery; but eats excellently, if salted and hung up for a day to give it firmness, then stuffed and broiled. Boiled cod's head and shoulders will be firmer, and have a better flavour, if a little salt is rubbed down the bone, and along the thick part, even if it is to be eaten the same day. Tie it up, and put it on the fire in cold water, which will completely cover it; throw a handful of salt into this with a couple of spoonsful of vinegar. Great care must be taken to serve it without the smallest speck of black or scum. Garnish with a large quantity of double parsley, lemon, horseradish, and the milt, roe, and liver, and fried smelts, if approved. If with smelts, be careful that no water hangs about the fish; or the beauty of the smelts will be taken off, as well as their flavour. Serve with plenty of oyster or shrimp sauce, and anchovy and butter. Time, about three minutes per pound. 158. CRIMPED COD, OR SLICES OF COD, must be put into boiling water, and after a space of three minutes, dash in cold water to lower the temperature; then finish as above. 159. TO FRY OR BROIL Slices of cod-fish, proceed as directed in the general remarks at pars. 114 and 115. 160. CURRY OF COD should be made of sliced cod, that has either been crimped or sprinkled for a day with salt to make it firm. Fry it of a fine brown with onion; and stew it with a good white gravy, a
A run of flatfish and cod methods from the era of the coal range and the fish kettle. Most of it translates directly; the timings and a few of the vessels do not.
- The turbot kettleA diamond-shaped pan with a perforated lifting plate, sized so the fish lies flat and covered. A large roasting tin on the hob, or a deep frying pan with a wide fish slice, does the same work; failing that, poach a whole turbot or brill in a low oven at 300F in a tin of seasoned water covered with foil.
- Time, about two minutes per poundPresumably counted from the moment the water reaches a boil, after a long slow heating from cold, so the fish has been cooking for some while before the count begins; the book does not say. Judge by the flesh parting cleanly from the bone at the thickest point; for a whole flatfish, reckon roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, which shreds the skin.
- "Be careful that no blacks fall"Soot from an open coal fire settling on the water and marking the white skin. Irrelevant on a modern hob, but the underlying instruction — skim the scum off the surface diligently so it does not redeposit on the fish — still decides how the dish looks.
- Do not skin the turbotThe white skin sets to a pale, gelatinous sheet and holds the fish together while it poaches. Brill behaves the same way. Soles are the exception: the book simply directs that they be skinned, and in practice it is the tough dark skin that is pulled off.
- Lobster roeThe coral from a hen lobster, dried in a low oven and rubbed through a sieve to a brick-red powder. Buy a cooked hen lobster and use the coral fresh if you cannot find it dried; the point is colour against the white skin.
- The 24-hour saltingBoth the fried plaice and the cod rely on a light dry-salt to firm watery flesh — sound technique, but do it in the refrigerator, not hung in a larder. Do not attempt the "hung up one or two days" salt cod at room temperature; that is a cure, and curing needs measured salt and controlled temperature.
- CrimpingSlashing a very fresh fish to the bone and plunging it into cold or iced water so the flesh contracts and sets firm. Fishmongers no longer do it. Slices of cod put into boiling water and checked with cold after three minutes will still cook evenly; simply drop them into water held just below the boil.
- Half a hundred of oystersFifty, for a pie made with a pair of medium soles. That is a Victorian oyster price talking. A dozen to eighteen, with their liquor, gives a comparable dish now.
- "When the pie comes home"Most likely the pie was sent out to a public bakehouse to be baked in the cooling bread oven and carried back, a common arrangement, though the book does not explain the phrase. Bake it yourself at 400F until the pastry is set and coloured, then lift a corner and pour in the cream. Cover with paste means a pastry lid — shortcrust or a plain puff.
- Fast-day fryingClarified butter rather than lard, so the dish keeps to the abstinence rules of the Church calendar. Either works; clarified butter browns the crumbs more sweetly, lard gives a crisper crust.
The British Cookery Book of 1859 was a compilation, and this stretch of fish cookery shows it: several passages, including the aside about the ignorant cook who skinned a turbot, descend almost word for word from Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery of 1806, which was still being reprinted and quietly quarried by later editors. Turbot was the grand fish of the English dinner table — the one that justified owning a purpose-built kettle — and the whole apparatus here, the unbroken white skin, the fringe of curled parsley, the lobster coral scattered over the belly and separate tureens of lobster, shrimp and anchovy sauce, exists to present it whole at table. Brill and plaice appear in the same chapter as the cheaper stand-ins, cooked identically, with plaice pushed towards the frying pan where its softer flesh does better. The cod entry is the frankest about money: it explains how to buy a whole fish when it is cheap, dress the head and shoulders fresh, and salt the tail end down for later, which is household economy rather than gastronomy.