Fish
O DRESS FISH-Fish is ordinarily cleaned in market. Wash it thoroughly in cold water not allowing it to soak at all. Wipe it with a clean, dry towel, and place on a plate, skin side down, in the ice-box.
TO BOIL FISH-A fish-kettle with strainer, is requisite for boiling a fish whole, but a plate held in a fish-cloth (a piece of coarse muslin or cheesecloth, kept for this purpose) is used for small pieces. The fish must not be put into cold water as that extracts the flavor, nor into boiling water, as that breaks the skin, but into warm water, which may then be quickly brought to the boiling point. After this, draw the kettle to the side of the range where it will simmer until done. Use enough water to entirely cover the fish; add one teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of vinegar to every two quarts of water; these whiten and harden the meat as well as season it. Allow ten minutes to the pound after the water begins to simmer.
If you wish to serve a whole boiled or baked fish upright, as if swimming, place a carrot inside the fish to retain its form, and arrange the garnishing so that it will keep its position on the platter. Bind the fish to the strainer with twine when cooking. Boiled fish needs a rich creamy sauce, such as egg sauce, Hollandaise, Béchamel, or drawn butter.
Court Bouillon is used for boiling fresh water fish or others without much flavor. It may be prepared beforehand and used several times. See Chapter on Soups.
These are working instructions for poaching a whole fish rather than a single dish, and most of them still hold. The one figure to ignore is the cooking time.
- Ten minutes to the pound is too longModern practice measures thickness, not weight: roughly 10 minutes per inch at the thickest part, and fish is done at 145F when the flesh just parts at the bone. A 4 lb salmon by the old rule would simmer 40 minutes and risks drying out; the same fish, about 3 inches thick, needs roughly 30 minutes at a bare simmer.
- The warm-water startThe reasoning is sound. Cold water leaches soluble proteins and flavour into the poaching liquid as it heats slowly, and a rolling boil bursts the skin and shreds the flakes. Start warm, bring it just to the point of trembling, then hold it there.
- "Draw the kettle to the side of the range"On a coal or wood range you moved the pot away from the firebox to drop the heat. On gas or induction this is the lowest setting that keeps a few bubbles rising at the edge, about 175-180F. The water should never actually boil after the initial come-up.
- Salt and vinegar proportionsOne teaspoon salt and one tablespoon vinegar per two quarts of water. This is a very light seasoning by current taste; a poaching liquid closer to a tablespoon of salt per quart seasons the flesh properly, and the acid does firm the surface and keep the flesh white.
- If you have no fish kettleA roasting pan across two burners works for a whole fish, or a large deep skillet for fillets. The plate-in-a-cloth trick is genuinely useful: it gives you something to lift by, and cheesecloth or a clean linen tea towel sling under the fish is the easiest way to get a cooked fish out intact.
- Court bouillonReferred out to the soup chapter, but at its simplest it is water with white wine or vinegar, sliced onion and carrot, parsley stems, bay, peppercorns, simmered 20 minutes before the fish goes in. The advice to reuse it several times assumes an ice-box and daily marketing; refrigerate it and use it within two days, or freeze it.
- ServingThe original gives no yield. Reckon 6-8 oz of whole fish per person, or 5-6 oz of fillet. Boiled fish is bland by design, so the sauce is not optional decoration — drawn butter is simply butter thickened with a little flour and water.
- The carrotA whole peeled carrot pushed into the body cavity to hold a swimming curve is a period presentation trick, not a flavouring. Remove it before serving.
The Butterick Cook Book came out of the Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, and it treats boiled fish as a matter of technique rather than of any one dish. The apparatus tells you how central it was: a fish kettle with a perforated lift-out strainer was standard equipment in a well-furnished kitchen, and a dedicated fish-cloth was expected to be kept aside for the purpose. The vocabulary is French — court bouillon, Béchamel, Hollandaise — which reflects how thoroughly American middle-class cookery of the period took its formal manners from French service, even while the naming was loose: what is described here is closer to poaching, and the instruction to bring the water quickly to boiling point and then simmer quietly admits as much. The swimming-fish presentation, propped upright and garnished into position, belongs to the same tradition of the dressed platter that produced aspics and moulded salads, and it faded with the elaborate multi-course dinner that supported it.