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A Brown Dish of Fish

A historical recipe from The Belgian Cookbook, by Luck, Brian, Mrs. (1915).

A historical recipe

The Belgian Cookbook, by Luck, Brian, Mrs. (1915). Project Gutenberg eBook #7223.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Source and licence

From The Belgian Cookbook, by Luck, Brian, Mrs. (1915). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #7223 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7223). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

Belgium. Associated with Belgium by the book is about Belgian cookery (Cooking, Belgian); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Take your fish, which should be herring or mackerel, relieve it of the bones, skin and fins, which you must put to boil for three quarters of an hour in water, with pepper and salt.
  2. After that time strain off the liquor, and add to it enough browning to color it well.
  3. Then brown quarter of a pound of butter and knead into it two tablespoonfuls of flour, add it, when well mixed, to your liquor, with salt and pepper, a piece of lemon peel, and a dust of mixed spice.
  4. Bring all this to the boil and drop in your fish.
  5. (Cut in neat fillets.) Let them simmer for twenty minutes, and if too dry pour in some darkly colored gravy.
  6. Just before you wish to serve add a good wine glass of claret, or of Burgundy, take out the lemon peel, and pour all on a hot dish.
  7. If you do not wish to put wine, the flavor of the sauce is very excellent if you stir into it a dessertspoonful of mushroom ketchup, or a teaspoonful of soy.
  8. This brown fish is nice to follow a white soup.