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By Root 1093 0

ideas. Minutely detailed recipes given in a French periodical of the nineties, Pot-au-feu by Madame Saint-Ange (her great work was published in 1927), and then Henri Babinski’s Gastronomie Pratique (Ali-Bab was his pen name) must have been an unimaginable relief to the Dora Copperfields of those days – just as Julia Child and Simone Beck are now to those whose taste in food is far beyond their skill as cooks.

Another point about very precise recipe writing is that it gives a far more accurate idea about the tastes of the past. If only those fifteenth-century cookery manuscripts gave precise quantities of the many spices that were used, we should be much better placed to discover whether our ancestors were practising a style of cookery that was refined and oriental in style, or closer to the dark blends of Christmas puddings and mincemeat.

Serves 6

3 Finnan haddock, about 1 kg (2 lb)

milk and water for poaching

1 kg (2 lb) firm potatoes, boiled, peeled and sliced

100 g (3½ oz) clarified butter

SAUCE

100 g (3½ oz) butter

1 small carrot, sliced

1 small onion, sliced

1 small turnip, sliced

4 tablespoons plain flour

450 ml (15 fl oz) boiled milk

bouquet garni

salt, pepper, nutmeg

100 ml (3½ fl oz) single cream

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

a little chopped parsley

a little lemon juice

Start with the sauce (it can be made in advance, up to the final additions). Melt half the butter and cook the sliced vegetables in it until they are lightly coloured but not brown. Stir in the flour, cook for 2 minutes, then moisten with the hot milk. Put in the bouquet with a little salt, pepper and nutmeg. Let it brew for an hour, reducing gently to a nicely pourable consistency. Strain it into a clean pan, without pressing the vegetables through (they are for flavouring rather than consistency).

About half an hour before the meal, poach the haddock in milk and water to cover. Drain and remove the bones. Some people may also like to discard the skin. Halve the haddock longways into six fillets and put them on to a hot dish. Keep them warm.

Fry the sliced potatoes in the clarified butter until they are golden crisp. Just before serving, put them round the haddock.

To finish the sauce, bring it to simmering point and beat in the remaining butter and the cream. Stir in the egg and parsley. Taste to see if the seasoning needs adjustment. Heighten the flavour with a little lemon juice, if you like. Pour the sauce into a hot sauceboat and serve it with the haddock and potatoes.

NOTE Don’t waste the haddock poaching milk, haddock bones and the vegetable debris from the sauce. Simmer them all together and then sieve into a clean pan (the carrot adds an appetizing orange tone). This makes a lovely soup basis, which you can enrich with a couple of egg yolks beaten up in a little cream.

KEDGEREE

This favourite Victorian breakfast dish was a convenient assemblage of yesterday’s cold fish and yesterday’s cold boiled rice. Unless the cook had a generous hand with the butter, I feel it was not always an inspiriting start to the day. The dish is based on Indian cookery, but the name is closer to the Hindi name, khichri, than to the recipe for it. Khichri was – and is – a mixture of rice and lentils with various seasonings; it might be eaten with fish or meat, or it might be eaten on its own. By whose genius the final dish was evolved, I do not know; but one thing is sure, kedgeree made with freshly cooked smoked haddock and freshly cooked rice is an excellent dish – not for breakfast perhaps, but for lunch or supper.

My own favourite recipe has always been Elizabeth David’s from Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen. My husband preferred a neighbour’s version that she had from somebody who had spent years in India before retiring to Cheltenham. Other people like additions of salmon and prawns. With the two basic recipes following, you have a good start for ingenuity. I would suggest that it is worth noting the way that the rice in recipe 1 is flavoured