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Recipes: Mullet
No. 47. Triglie alla Marinara (Mullet) Ingredients: Mullet, salt, pepper, onions, parsley, oil, water.
Cut a mullet into pieces and put it into a stewpan (with the lid on), with salt, pepper, a cut-up onion, some chopped parsley, half a wineglass of the finest olive oil and half a pint of water, and in this cook the fish gently.
Arrange the fillets on a dish, pour a little of the broth over them, and add the onion and parsley. Instead of mullet you can use cod, hake, whiting, lemon sole, &c.
No. 48. Mullet alla Tolosa Ingredients: Mullet, butter, salt, onions, parsley, almonds, anchovies, button mushrooms, tomatoes.
Cut off the fins and gills of mullet, put it in a ounces of butter and salt. Cut up a small bit of onion, a sprig of parsley, a few blanched almonds, one anchovy, and a few button mushrooms, previously softened in hot water, and put them over the fish and bake for twenty minutes.
Then add two tablespoonsful of tomato sauce or purée, and when cooked serve. If you like, use sole instead of mullet.
No. 49. Mullet alla Triestina Ingredients: Mullet (or sole or turbot), butter, salt, half a lemon, Chablis.
Put the fish in a fireproof dish with one and a half ounce of butter, salt, a squeeze of lemon juice, and half a glass of Chablis. Put it on a very slow fire and turn the fish when necessary. When it is cooked serve in the dish.
No. 50. Whiting alla Genovese Ingredients: Whiting, butter, pepper, salt, bay leaf, claret, parsley, onions, garlic, capers, vinegar, Espagnole sauce, mushrooms, anchovies.
Put one or two whiting into a stewpan with two ounces of butter, salt, pepper, two bay leaves, and a glass of claret or Burgundy; cook on a hot fire and turn the fish when necessary. Have ready beforehand a remoulade sauce made in the following manner :- Put in a saucepan 1½ ounce of butter, half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, half an onion, a clove of garlic (with one cut), four capers, one anchovy, all chopped up except the garlic. Then add three tablespoonsful of vinegar and reduce the sauce.
Add two glasses of Espagnole sauce (No. 1) and a little good stock; boil it all up (take out the garlic and bay leaves) and pass through a sieve, then pour it over the whiting. Boil it all again for a few minutes, and before serving garnish with a few button mushrooms cooked separately. The remoulade sauce will be much better if made some hours beforehand.
No. 51. Merluzzo in Bianco (Cod) Ingredients: Cod or whiting, salt, onions, parsley, H cloves, turnips, marjoram, chervil, milk. mar- Boil gently in a big cupful of salted water two onions, one turnip, a pinch of chopped parsley, chervil, and joram and four cloves. After half an hour pass this through a sieve (but first take out the cloves), and add an equal quantity of milk and a little cream, and in this cook the fish and serve with the sauce over it.
No. 52. Merluzzo in Salamoia (Cod) Ingredients: Cod, hake, whiting or red mullet, onions, parsley, mint, marjoram, turnips, mushrooms, chervil, cloves, salt, milk, cream, eggs.
Put a saltspoonful of salt, two onions, a little parsley, marjoram, mint, chervil, a turnip, a mushroom, and the heads of two cloves into a stewpan and simmer in a cupful of milk for half an hour, then let all the ingredients settle at the bottom, and pass the broth through a hair sieve, and add to it an equal quantity of milk or cream, and in it cook your fish on a slow fire. When the fish is quite cooked, pour off the sauce, but leave a little on the fish to keep it warm; reduce the rest in a bain-marie; stir all the time, so that the milk may not curdle. Thicken the sauce with the yolk of an egg, and when about to serve pour it over the fish.
No. 53. Baccalà in Istufato (Haddock) Ingredients: Haddock or lemon sole, carrots, anchovies, lemon, pepper, butter, onions, flour, white wine, stock.
Stuff a haddock (or filleted lemon sole) with some slices of carrot which have been masked with a paste made of pounded anchovies, very little chopped lemon peel, salt and pepper. Then fry an onion with two cuts across it in butter. Take out the onion as soon as it has become a golden colour, flour the fish and put it in the butter, and when it has been well fried on both sides pour a glass of Marsala over it, and when it is all absorbed add a cup of fowl or veal stock and let it simmer for half an hour, then skim and reduce the sauce, pour it over the fish and serve.
No. 54. Naselli con Piselli (Whiting) Ingredients: Whiting, onions, parsley, peas, tomatoes, butter, Parmesan, Béchamel sauce. Cut a big whiting into two or three pieces and fry them slightly in butter, add a small bit of onion, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and fry for a few minutes more. Then add some peas which have been cooked in salted water, three tablespoonsful of Béchamel sauce (No. 3), and three of tomato purée, and cook all together on a moderate fire.
A run of Italian fish braises translated for an Edwardian English kitchen, which is why the mullet keeps being swapped for cod, whiting and sole. The text has come through with a few gaps and one clear misprint; the notes below fill in what a cook needs to proceed.
- Which mulletTriglie is red mullet (Mullus surmuletus or barbatus), a small, firm, sweet fish, not the grey mullet often sold simply as "mullet" in Britain and the US. As a rough guide, one or two small red mullet make a portion; the recipe gives no quantities, so judge by appetite and by the waste in whole bone-in fish.
- The gap in No. 48"Put it in a ounces of butter" has lost a word or two; it should read something like "put it in a fireproof dish with two ounces of butter." Assume a shallow buttered baking dish. No oven heat is given; a moderate oven (around 350F) for the stated twenty minutes will just cook a whole small fish through.
- Wineglass and glassA wineglass in this period is usually reckoned about 2 fl oz, so half a wineglass of oil is roughly 2 tablespoons. The unqualified "glass" used for claret, Chablis and Marsala is generally taken as larger, perhaps nearer 4 fl oz or half a cup, which would make the "two glasses of Espagnole" in No. 50 about a cup of sauce.
- Cooking times are the weak pointOnly No. 48 (twenty minutes) and No. 53 (half an hour's simmer) give a time for the fish itself; the half-hours in Nos. 51 and 52 are for the aromatic infusion, not the fish. Fillets poached in the milk or wine broths of Nos. 47, 49, 51 and 52 need 5-8 minutes at a bare shiver; whole small fish 10-12. Take them out when the flesh just parts and finish reducing the liquid separately.
- Don't let the milk sauces boilIn Nos. 51 and 52 the aromatics are infused into milk, then the fish poached in it. Milk held at a rolling boil, especially after the egg yolk goes in at the end of No. 52, will curdle and grain. Keep the pan below a simmer throughout, and add the yolk off the heat with the sauce no hotter than about 175F.
- "Remoulade" here is not remouladeThe sauce in No. 50 is a reduced vinegar-and-aromatics base let down with Espagnole — a hot brown sauce in the family of what would now be called a piquante or ravigote. It has nothing to do with the cold mayonnaise sauce of the same name. Espagnole (the book's No. 1) is a long-cooked brown stock sauce; a good reduced brown veal stock is the practical stand-in.
- Titles that don't match the dishBaccalà means salt cod, but No. 53 is a fresh haddock stuffed and braised, and the ingredient list calls for white wine while the method says Marsala — use the Marsala, which suits the anchovy stuffing. In salamoia means "in brine," yet No. 52 is a milk poach; both are loose Anglo-Italian labelling rather than instructions to salt anything.
- Anchovy and saltSeveral of these lean on pounded anchovy for depth, and salt- or oil-packed fillets vary a good deal in saltiness. Season the poaching liquid lightly and correct at the end, after the sauce has been reduced.
- ServingThese are single-course fish dishes, served from the cooking vessel or with the fillets lifted onto a warm platter and the strained broth spooned over. Bread rather than a starch alongside; No. 54 already has peas, and Parmesan is listed among its ingredients though the method never says where it goes.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) was assembled by Mrs W. G. Waters around a Boccaccian frame as a vehicle for Italian cooking at a moment when English kitchens knew France well and Italy hardly at all. The mullet recipes show the translation strain plainly: the compiler keeps the Italian titles, alla marinara, alla Triestina, alla Genovese, then immediately offers cod, hake, whiting and lemon sole to readers who would not find red mullet at a London fishmonger. Red mullet itself carried a long prestige; the Romans prized mullus extravagantly, and Pliny records absurd prices paid for large specimens, a reputation that survived into nineteenth-century menus where the fish was often cooked whole and ungutted, its liver left in for flavour. The milk-and-herb poaching liquors of Nos. 51 and 52 belong less to Italy than to the international hotel repertoire of the period, and the appearance of Espagnole and Béchamel by number, cross-referenced to the front of the book, shows how firmly French sauce grammar underpinned even a self-consciously Italian collection.