Day Seven - Friday - Dinner

It's Fish Friday!  In the Victorian era, many people ate fish on a Friday for religious reasons.  For others, it was simply more affordable to eat seafood than it was to eat meat.

Dinner:  Mussels cooked in Cider;  Bread;  Fried Fish;  Fried Potatoes;  Peas and Beans.

For the first course of Friday night's dinner, I cooked mussels.  I actually couldn't find a Victorian-England recipe for these, although they were definitely eaten during the period.  Neither Mrs Beeton or Eliza Acton mention them (perhaps they were too working-class an ingredient for these ladies to bother themselves with?  Who knows.)  At any rate, for this one occasion I decided to fall back on using a modern recipe, but making sure that all the ingredients were commonly available to the average Victorian household.  This recipe has the mussels being steamed in apple cider, with bacon, onion, and thyme.

Now I remember why I don't generally cook mussels.  

Don't get me wrong - these were delicious!  I would absolutely order this from a menu in a restaurant.  It's just that it takes so long to scrub the little buggers before cooking them, and by the time you throw out all the dead ones, I find that they suddenly aren't as economical as they first appeared.  Maybe that was just bad luck on this occasion.

Anyway, they were very tasty - and I was very pleased to find that Daughter ate them without any fuss (she had never tried a mussel before, and was very suspicious of the look of them).  She concluded that they weren't that exciting, but they were okay provided she didn't have to look at them too much.

I served a nice loaf of bread alongside the mussels.

For our second course, I fried the fillets of cod that I had frozen on Wednesday.

I was interested to see that Eliza Acton advised frying the fish just as I normally do anyway:  simply by dusting the fish with seasoned flour, and frying it in oil (or lard, which I do not normally use).  Mrs Beeton's instructions involve crumb-coating the fish.  There is no batter in sight.

Anyway, I was quite pleased with this, as simply flouring the fish before frying it is my favourite way.

I served the fish with sides of fried potatoes, boiled peas, and boiled beans.

I followed Eliza Acton's instructions on all of these (apart from the bit about removing the peas and beans from the packets in my freezer, that is).  The potatoes were cooked in lard, and were yummy, although still not quite as crispy as I thought they might be.

The fish was very good indeed, and Husband and Daughter were much more comfortable with it in this form than they were with Wednesday's more theatrical presentation.

And so our last full day in Victorian England ended, with a dessert of Victoria Sandwiches, leftover from tea time.  Just one more meal remains of our adventure, being Saturday's breakfast.