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Fish Cocktail
Take a small piece of cold boiled halibut, remove the skin and bones and flake it. Season it with salt and a little pepper. Make a cocktail sauce by mixing together for each glass 1 teaspoonful Tarra- 1 teaspoonful lemongon vinegar juice 1 teaspoonful toma- 1/2 teaspoonful of horseto catsup radish I drop Tabasco sauce Take about a tablespoonful of fish for each portion, put in a glass, and pour the sauce over.
A cold appetiser built from a few tablespoons of leftover poached fish, dressed at the last minute. The whole thing lives or dies on temperature: the fish and the glasses must be genuinely cold, and the sauce should not go on until the moment of serving.
- The sauce, per glassRead as one teaspoon each of tarragon vinegar, lemon juice and tomato catsup, half a teaspoon of horseradish, and one drop of Tabasco. That yields roughly a tablespoon of sauce, matched to the tablespoon of fish.
- Tomato catsupCatsup of the period was often thinner and sharper than the ketchup on a supermarket shelf today, though commercial brands were already being sweetened. If your ketchup is very sweet, cut the quantity slightly or add a few extra drops of lemon juice.
- HorseradishThe recipe means grated fresh or bottled horseradish in vinegar, drained. Creamed horseradish will slacken the sauce and dull the bite.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, but easily made by steeping a few bruised tarragon sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. Plain white wine vinegar plus a pinch of chopped tarragon is a fair stand-in.
- The fishCold boiled halibut flakes into firm, dry pieces that hold their shape under the sauce, though the recipe gives no reason for the choice. Cold cod, haddock, salmon or leftover poached monkfish all work; avoid oily fish like mackerel, which fights the vinegar.
- Keep it coldCooked fish held at room temperature is the weak point of any cold fish dish. Refrigerate the flaked halibut until you assemble, chill the glasses, and serve within the hour rather than letting portions stand out on a tray.
- Yield and serviceA tablespoon of fish per glass makes a small first course; a cup of flaked fish gives about sixteen portions. The recipe specifies only that the fish go into a glass with the sauce poured over.
Cocktails of shellfish and fish belong to the American restaurant boom of the later nineteenth century -- oyster cocktails were being served by the 1870s and 1880s -- with the 1890s and 1900s the period when the oyster cocktail spread from the raw bar to the start of the formal dinner and the name attached itself to anything served cold in a small stemmed glass with a sharp tomato dressing. Tabasco, on the market since the 1860s, and bottled tomato catsup were exactly the sort of manufactured seasonings a turn-of-the-century household kept to hand, and they made the sauce a matter of measuring rather than cooking. What this book adds is the economy: a cocktail of fresh crab or lobster was a luxury course, while a few tablespoons of yesterday's boiled halibut dressed the same way cost nothing and arrived at the table looking like the restaurant version. That substitution -- the leftover reappearing at the top of the menu rather than buried in a hash -- is the whole argument of the left-over cookbook genre.