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Fresh Mackerel, Boiled
Clean a large mackerel, tie it in a cloth, and cook about twenty minutes. Serve with nasturtium sauce.
A three-line recipe that assumes a great deal: the poaching liquid, the pan and the accompanying sauce are all left to the cook's judgement. Here is what the period took for granted.
- The cooking liquidNothing is specified, so use salted water barely acidulated with a splash of vinegar or lemon, or a light court bouillon with onion, bay and peppercorns. Mackerel is rich and oily, and the acid keeps the flesh from tasting heavy.
- Never actually boil itDespite the title, boiled fish is generally better done in barely trembling water. Bring the liquid to a boil, slide the fish in, then drop the heat so the surface only shivers; a rolling boil will burst the skin and shred the flakes.
- The clothTying the fish in a floured cloth or square of muslin holds it together and gives you something to lift it out by. A modern substitute is a fish kettle with its perforated trivet, or a length of cheesecloth left long at both ends as handles.
- Twenty minutes is longNo weight is given, and twenty minutes would only suit an unusually large whole fish. Reckon instead on about 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the shoulder, or roughly 8 to 12 minutes for a typical 1 to 1.5 lb fish. It is done when the flesh at the backbone has just turned opaque, about 145F.
- Nasturtium saucePickled nasturtium seeds were a common kitchen-garden substitute for capers, and nasturtium sauce was typically a plain butter or drawn-butter sauce with the pickled seeds and a little of their vinegar stirred in. Capers in brine give a close result.
- Buying the fishMackerel goes off faster than almost any other fish because of its oil content. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean sea smell, and cook it the day you buy it.
- YieldOne large mackerel serves two; allow a whole small fish per person. Serve hot with the sauce and boiled potatoes, or let it cool in the liquid and eat it cold with the same sauce.
Mackerel was a cheap, abundant and highly perishable fish, sold fresh in coastal and city markets and salted everywhere else, which is why cookbooks treat it so casually. The pairing with a sharp, pickled sauce is old and practical: an oily fish wants acid, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English tradition that these books inherit served mackerel with gooseberry sauce, fennel sauce, or a caper-style sauce. Nasturtium seeds, pickled in vinegar, were a common household stand-in for imported capers in kitchen-garden cooking. The brevity here is itself period evidence: boiling a whole fish in a cloth was assumed knowledge, and only the sauce was thought worth naming.