Home › Fish, Eggs, and Sauces › Fish Pies
Fish Pies
These are served at all of the English and French inns, and are not hard to make at home.
Dip 1/2 pound of stale bread-crumbs in enough milk to moisten, add 1 ounce of butter, a little salt and pepper, and beat until smooth over the fire. Add parsley, thyme, and a bayleaf, and take off to cool. Skin and bone 2 good flounder, cod, bass, or mackerel; scrape and pound half of the flesh and add it to the bread mixture. Season the rest, cut into slices, and arrange it in layers in a deep dish, with forcemeat of the fish and bread between, and dropping little bits of butter here and there. Have ready 1 cup of fish broth or consomme or veal stock, rather thick and well seasoned; pour it over and arrange slices of bacon on top, under a lid of fine puff paste. Leave a hole in the middle for the steam to escape, cover with a layer of buttered paper, and bake 3 hours in a slow oven. Take off the paper, and when the pie is brown, fill the hole with 1/2 cup of stock, mixed with a tablespoonful of sherry or white wine, and serve cold.
A cold fish pie in the old inn manner: half the fish pounded into a bread forcemeat, the rest layered in slices, the whole set under puff paste and allowed to cool so the stock jellies. The one instruction to reconsider is the baking time.
- Three hours is far too longFlounder, cod, bass and mackerel are cooked through in fifteen to twenty minutes; three hours at any temperature reduces them to dry threads. The time reflects a period oven that held heat unevenly and a cook who wanted the pastry lid coloured and the stock reduced. Bake until the crust is set and browned and the filling is hot to the centre, roughly an hour, and no longer.
- A slow ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 300F. If the pastry is not colouring by the end, the heat can be raised for the last ten minutes with the paper off; the recipe itself gives no temperature.
- The buttered paperA greased sheet of parchment laid loosely over the pastry, not wrapped round it. It stops the puff paste from taking colour before the filling is done, and is lifted off near the end. Foil does the same job but blocks steam more completely.
- Half a pound of stale bread-crumbsAbout 4 cups of crumbs from a firm white loaf gone stale, not the fine dried sort sold in canisters. Moisten with roughly a cup of milk, enough to make a paste that holds together when beaten over low heat.
- Two good fishTwo whole flounder or a comparable weight of the others gives roughly a pound and a half of skinned, boned flesh, depending on the size of the fish. Half is pounded raw into the crumb mixture as forcemeat; a food processor does in seconds what a mortar did by hand, but pulse rather than puree or the texture turns rubbery.
- Fish broth rather thickThe stock is meant to be gelatinous so it sets when the pie cools. A well-reduced fish or veal stock made with bones will do this on its own; a carton stock will not, and the pie will be wet rather than sliceable.
- The bay leaf and thymeThe recipe does not say whether the herbs go in whole or chopped, or whether they are taken out. If a stalk of thyme and a bay leaf are added whole, lift them out before the forcemeat is used; they are unpleasant to meet at the table.
- The hole and the second fillingThe steam vent doubles as the funnel for the finishing stock. Warm the half cup of stock and sherry slightly so it runs into the pie rather than sitting on the crust, and do this while the pie is still hot; it will set as the pie cools.
- ServingServed cold, in wedges, as a cold-table or picnic dish. This quantity should feed about six as a main course. Refrigerate once cool and eat within two days.
Cold fish pies of this kind belong to the long European tradition of the raised or covered pie eaten at room temperature -- portable, sliceable food that keeps a day or two because the reduced stock sets to a jelly and seals the filling. The construction here resembles French charcuterie logic applied to fish: a panada of bread and milk bound with pounded flesh, layered against slices of the same fish, the whole enriched with bacon and enclosed in pastry. The note that these are served at all of the English and French inns suggests the author is passing on something eaten while travelling rather than a family receipt.