Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Fish Gravy
Fish Gravy
Put into a saucepan two pounds of any kind of fish flesh cut into pieces with half a gallon of water, and add a blade of mace, three cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs and a small quantity each of lemon peel and salt. Place the lid on the pan, set it on the fire and boil until the liquor is reduced to one-half its original quantity, then add a lump of butter and a tablespoonful of flour and stir well until the latter is quite smooth, or the flour and butter may be worked smooth in a saucepan and the gravy strained over. Boil for a few minutes, and the gravy is then ready for use.
This is a fish stock finished with a light roux — what a modern kitchen would call a simple fish velouté. The one thing to change is the length of the boil: two pounds of fish flesh has given up everything it has in 25 to 30 minutes, and beyond that the liquid turns cloudy and takes on a dull, glue-like taste.
- Reduce faster, not longerHalf a gallon is 8 cups, reducing to 4. Rather than boiling fish flesh for the hour or more that would take in a covered pan, simmer the fish uncovered for 25 minutes, strain it out, then reduce the strained liquid hard to 4 cups. Same result, cleaner flavour.
- The lidOscar's instruction to cover the pan works against the reduction. Leave it off, or ajar at most, if you want the liquid down by half in reasonable time.
- "Any kind of fish flesh"Lean white fish — cod, haddock, halibut, sole, whiting — and their frames and heads. Avoid salmon, mackerel and other oily fish, which give a stock that tastes rancid as it sits. Racks and heads yield more body than fillet does, and cost less.
- A blade of maceOne whole piece of the dried aril that surrounds nutmeg. If you only have ground, use a scant 1/8 teaspoon and add it with the flour rather than at the start.
- A bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet of parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf, tied or bagged so it lifts out whole. Tie the cloves and mace in with it and you can skip straining for spice.
- A lump of butterGenuinely vague in the original. For 4 cups of liquid, 2 tablespoons butter to 1 tablespoon flour gives a very light sauce that barely coats; 4 tablespoons butter to 4 tablespoons flour gives a proper napping sauce. Oscar clearly intends the thin end.
- Use the second methodWorking the butter and flour smooth in the pan first and straining the hot stock over it is the more reliable of the two options he offers, and less likely to give lumps. Cook the roux a minute before the liquid goes in, then simmer 5 minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- Yield and seasoningAbout 4 cups, enough to sauce fish for eight to ten. Salt at the end, after reduction has concentrated what went in at the start, and finish with lemon juice or a spoon of cream.
Sauce built on fish broth was the backbone of Lenten and "maigre" cookery in the French tradition, where meat stock was forbidden and cooks needed something to moisten fish, vegetables and made dishes on fast days. Around the period when Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms, the classical kitchen was moving towards formalising this into fumet de poisson thickened with roux — the velouté de poisson that Escoffier would codify in Le Guide Culinaire in 1903, some years after Oscar's 1896 book — and it sat at the base of the whole family of white fish sauces. What is interesting about Oscar's version is how plainly domestic it is: no wine, no mushroom trimmings, no shallot, just fish, water, mace, cloves, herbs and lemon peel, a spicing that would have looked entirely familiar in an English kitchen a century earlier. His book was written for readers who wanted the Waldorf's repertoire at home, and this entry is the kind of foundation recipe that other dishes in the same volume build upon.