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Fish Forcemeat
Free any kind of delicate fish from skin, fat and bone. Pound, strain, use one-half pint of the fish and proceed as for chicken forcemeat. Ge
A cross-reference recipe rather than a standalone one: the fish stands in for chicken in the book's forcemeat formula, which binds pounded flesh with a panada of bread or breadcrumbs, butter, egg and seasoning. The text as printed breaks off mid-word, so the proportions have to come from the chicken version.
- Half a pint of fishA pint is 2 cups, so half a pint is 1 cup of pounded flesh, measured after pounding and sieving rather than before. Reckon on roughly 8 oz of trimmed raw fillet to get there.
- "Delicate fish"In period usage this generally points to lean white fish with fine flesh: sole, whiting, haddock, pike, flounder. Oily fish such as mackerel or salmon can overwhelm a consomme garnish and tint the forcemeat grey-pink.
- Pound and strainThe mortar and the drum sieve are what a food processor replaced. Pulse the raw fish cold, then push it through a fine sieve with a rubber scraper to catch sinew and any missed pin bones; the sieving is what makes the texture, not the chopping.
- Keep everything coldRaw fish forcemeat splits if it warms. Chill the bowl and blade, work quickly, and rest the mixture in the refrigerator before shaping.
- Shaping and poachingForcemeat for soup is formed into small quenelles with two teaspoons or piped into pea-sized balls, then poached in barely trembling salted water or stock at about 175F. Boiling breaks them apart. Pea-sized balls need only a few minutes and larger spoon-shaped quenelles longer; they float and firm when done.
- Test before you commitPoach one spoonful first and taste it. Seasoning that reads correct in the raw paste is usually flat once cooked, and this is the only chance to correct salt, cayenne, nutmeg or lemon.
- YieldA cup of pounded fish, once bound, makes roughly 30 to 40 small quenelles, enough to garnish six to eight bowls of clear fish soup.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing, and by way of the English kitchen the word came to cover any pounded, bound and seasoned meat paste, whether it filled a bird or was poached alone. In the classical service that the Butterick book was teaching to American households at the turn of the century, clear soups were commonly served with a garnish, and small poached quenelles of chicken or fish were among the standard ones. The preparation is hand work: the mortar, the pestle and the tammy sieve were serious labour, and a cook who could produce a smooth, light quenelle was demonstrating a skill that took real time. That the fish version is given in a single sentence, referred back to the chicken formula, is a common economy in cookbooks of the period.