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Jelly for Cold Fish
Take a small skate, clean it well, place it over the fire in a fish-kettle with a calf's foot, a slice of bacon, an onion, a piece of horse-radish, three or four blades of mace, a piece of lemon peel, and a sprinkling of white pepper. Pour over three quarts of water and allow it to simmer until it is a jelly. Strain, let it stand until cold, and take off the fat; take the jelly up without the sediment, place it over the fire with a piece of lemon, the whites of four eggs and a glass of sherry. Allow it to boil for a few minutes without stirring, then place it in a warm spot, and let it stand for half an hour. Strain through a sieve with a cloth in it, and cover the cold fish with it.
Savory Jelly as Mayonnaise Prepare one quart of aspic jelly, place it in a stewpan with one tablespoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of salad oil, and one pinch of mignonette pepper; whisk the jelly for ten minutes, then place the pan on the ice, and continue whipping until the mayonnaise is set and firm; remove, melt, then whip it over the ice till it sets again. Warm it once more, and strain through a jelly bag. It is then ready for use. Whipping it over the ice twice, it is generally conceded, makes it whiter and smoother.
This is a two-part entry: a fish aspic built on skate and calf's foot, then a whipped aspic used in place of mayonnaise as a coating. Both depend on gelatin extracted from bone and cartilage rather than from a packet, and on patient clarification.
- Skate and calf's foot are the gelatinSkate wings are almost entirely cartilage, and a calf's foot is the classic setting agent of the period; together they give a stock that gels without added gelatine. Fishmongers still sell skate wing, but a calf's or pig's foot generally needs to be ordered from a butcher. No weight or size is given for either, so the proportions are left to the cook.
- Judge the set, not the clock"Simmer until it is a jelly" means cooking the three quarts down to a heavily bodied stock; the recipe gives neither a time nor a target volume, and several hours at a bare tremble is usual. Test by chilling a spoonful on a saucer: it should be firm enough to hold a cut edge.
- Never let it boil hardA rolling boil emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid and no amount of clarifying will pull them back out. Keep the surface barely moving throughout the first cooking.
- The egg-white raftThe whites are the clarification. Once they set into a crust, the instruction not to stir is the hinge of the whole recipe: disturbing the raft cloudsthe jelly permanently. Ladle the liquid out through the raft, then strain through a cloth-lined sieve without pressing.
- A glass of sherry"A glass" in recipes of this period is usually read as a wineglass, conventionally about 2 fl oz, or roughly a quarter cup; the recipe does not specify. Use a dry sherry such as amontillado or fino; cream sherry will sweeten a savory jelly.
- Blades of mace and mignonette pepperMace blades are the dried aril of nutmeg, sold whole in spice shops; three or four amount to roughly a teaspoon once broken up. Mignonette pepper is coarsely cracked pepper -- usually white, in some versions with black and a little coriander -- cracked rather than ground.
- The fish kettleAny deep pot that holds the skate flat will do. The long, lidded fish kettle mattered because it let the wing poach without breaking up, and here the fish is being cooked for its gelatin rather than to be served.
- Whipping over iceFor the second preparation, chill a metal bowl over an ice bath and whip as the aspic cools to the point of setting; the air held in it turns the jelly opaque and pale. The recipe's own claim is that the second whipping makes it whiter and smoother; treat that as the period's judgement. Each round of heat should be gentle, just to liquid.
- Yield and holdingThe recipe gives no yield; the second preparation calls for a quart of aspic, which is the order of quantity this would make, enough to coat a large cold salmon or a platter of poached fillets. Coat the fish while the jelly is at the point of setting, in thin layers, and keep the finished dish refrigerated; a gelatin-coated cold fish should not sit out on a buffet for hours.
Cold fish under aspic was a fixture of the late nineteenth-century buffet, where a whole salmon or turbot glazed to a mirror finish was as much a piece of table architecture as a dish. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, compiled this book in 1896 from the working repertoire of a hotel kitchen that fed enormous cold suppers after balls and receptions. The technique of whipping aspic until it turns white and using it as a mayonnaise substitute belongs to the same tradition: French garde-manger work, in which sauces were made to hold a shape and take a decoration. Skate appears here not as a food but as a tool, a cheap cartilaginous fish valued for the body it gives a stock, which is much the same reason calf's feet turn up in the jelly recipes of the period before commercial powdered gelatine made the whole operation a matter of stirring a packet into hot liquid.