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Marinade for Fish
Chop fine two carrots, three onions, six shallots, and a clove of garlic; put them into a saucepan, add a bunch each of sweet herbs and parsley, and a little butter, then let cook slowly over the fire for a few minutes; pour in two pints of cider or any sweet wine, though the former is preferable, and boil for two or three minutes, next add two dozen peppercorns and an equal quantity of allspice, three cloves and a handful of salt. Place the saucepan at the side of the fire and simmer gently for an hour and a half; strain, and the marinade is ready for use. It is generally employed for the purpose of boiling fish, to which it gives a very pleasant flavor. It will last for a long time, and can be used on several occasions, taking care to strain it after the fish has been boiled and removed.
This is a court bouillon rather than a marinade in the modern sense — nothing is soaked in it raw. It is an aromatic poaching liquid, and the notes below deal mostly with quantities the original leaves open and with how to keep it.
- The hinge: never let the fish boilThe liquid is boiled while it is being made, but once fish goes in it should sit at a bare shiver, around 160–175F, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil tears delicate fillets apart and squeezes them dry; whole fish will split along the back.
- "A handful of salt"Genuinely ambiguous, and on the heavy side of anything a modern cook would reach for. Treat the finished liquid as you would pasta water — start with about 1 tablespoon of fine salt per quart, taste, and adjust. It should taste seasoned, not briny.
- Two pints of ciderMost likely alcoholic cider rather than American sweet cider from the jug, though the recipe's alternative of "any sweet wine" leaves the point open. Modern hard cider or a dry white wine both work; sweet unfermented apple cider will leave the liquid sweeter than intended.
- Shallots and garlicSix shallots here may well mean six small single-lobed bulbs, closer to two or three of today's large shallots than to six of them. One clove of garlic in two pints is background, not flavor -- resist raising it.
- "A bunch of sweet herbs"A bouquet garni: thyme, a bay leaf, and parsley stems tied with string, plus a stalk of celery if you have one. Tying it saves you nothing here since everything is strained, but it keeps the herbs from breaking up during the long simmer.
- "At the side of the fire"On a coal range the far end of the top plate held a temperature well below boiling. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting with the lid ajar — an occasional bubble, no more. Ninety minutes at a real simmer will boil away a good part of the two pints.
- YieldTwo pints is a quart to begin with, and ninety minutes of simmering plus what the vegetables hold back will leave you rather less than that once strained. Whole fish need to be more or less covered, so scale up rather than crowd.
- Keeping itThe claim that it "will last for a long time" assumes a cold larder and daily reboiling. Once fish has cooked in it the liquid holds fish protein: strain, chill promptly, and use within two or three days, or freeze it in portions. It reduces beautifully into a sauce base, which is the better use of the second batch.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, compiled his 1896 Cook Book from the professional French repertoire the hotel's kitchens actually ran on, which is why a page titled "Marinade for Fish" is really a court bouillon — the standard vegetable-and-wine poaching bath of nineteenth-century French cookery, the "short broth." The preference for cider over wine points toward Normandy and Brittany, where cider stands in for white wine in fish cookery as a matter of course; the acid firms the flesh and keeps it white while the aromatics season it from the outside in. The instruction to strain the liquid and save it belongs to a hotel kitchen with a cold room and a fish station working every service, not to a household refrigerator, and it is a useful reminder of how much of this book was written for cooks who would boil a stock again each morning as a matter of routine.