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Jellied Fish
In summer cold fish is quite as acceptable as warm, and a luncheon dish can easily be prepared by mixing one and one-half cups of any wellseasoned cold flaked fish with two tablespoonfuls of chopped capers. Soak one tablespoonful of granulated gelatine in two tablespoonfuls of cold water for half an hour. Add one cup of boiling water and stir until the gelatine dissolves. Then add two tablespoonfuls of lemon-juice and a little salt. Put slices of hard-cooked eggs in the bottom of an earthen mold holding about a quart, and add the fish. Pour the jelly carefully over all and put on ice to harden. Garnish a platter with watercress or lettuce and turn the mold out on this. It must be served at once after unmolding. Use any kind of salad dressing, or sauce Tartare (see page 74).
A straightforward cold-set aspic built on leftover cooked fish. The only real variables are the gelatine ratio and the mold size, both of which need a second look.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one modern envelope (an envelope is 1/4 oz / 7 g, a scant tablespoon), and here it sets about 1 1/4 cups of liquid in all -- the 2 tablespoons of soaking water, the cup of boiling water and the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. That is a firm, sliceable set, chosen so the mold will hold its shape on the platter rather than slump.
- Bloom it properlyThe half-hour soak in cold water is not padding. Gelatine that has not fully hydrated leaves gritty threads in the finished jelly. Two tablespoons of water is barely enough to cover it, so stir once and let it swell.
- Never boil itAdd the boiling water off the heat and stir until clear. Gelatine held at a rolling boil loses setting power, and a jelly that will not turn out of the mold is the one failure this dish cannot recover from.
- Mold sizeThe fish, the jelly and the sliced eggs together come to only about 3 cups, so the quart mold the recipe names will sit noticeably short of full. A 3-cup mold or small loaf pan gives a taller shape that is easier to slice.
- The fish itselfCold cooked salmon, cod, haddock or halibut all work; oily fish give a richer result. Use fish that has been refrigerated no more than a day or two, and keep the assembled mold chilled throughout, as nothing here is cooked again.
- Setting time"Put on ice to harden" means four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Chill the sliced eggs and fish in the mold first, then pour the cooled but still-liquid jelly over so the layers do not shift.
- UnmoldingDip the mold in warm water for a few seconds, no longer, then invert onto the greens. The instruction to serve at once is sound: left at room temperature the jelly quickly softens and weeps.
- YieldAbout four luncheon servings. Season the fish more assertively than seems right, since cold jellied food tastes flatter than warm.
Jellied and molded dishes suited a household that had an icebox but no freezer, where cooked fish had to be used up quickly in warm weather. Aspic and gelee work of this kind had long been part of the professional French repertoire, and the arrival of packaged granulated gelatine at the end of the nineteenth century put it within reach of the home cook, in place of the long labor of boiling down calves' feet or isinglass for stock jelly. A mold turned out on watercress looked deliberate rather than thrifty. The capers, lemon juice and sauce Tartare are all conventional accompaniments to cold fish, sharp enough to carry a dish served without any heat behind it.