Baked Herring
Soak salt herring over night, roll in flour and butter, and place in a dripping-pan with a very little water over them; season with pepper.-Mrs. E. J. Starr.
Four lines of instruction with no oven temperature, no time and no quantities — typical of the terse fish chapter in Buckeye Cookery. What matters most is the soak, because everything else is straightforward.
- The soak is the recipeHard-cured salt herring are packed dry or in brine and are inedibly salty as they come. An overnight soak in cold water, changed two or three times, is the minimum; taste a shaving of the flesh before baking and keep soaking if it still bites.
- What to buy nowThe barrel-salted herring of 1877 is uncommon in supermarkets but sold in Scandinavian, Polish, German and Jewish delis, usually labelled salt herring; schmaltz herring, a fatter and often milder cure, is sold alongside it. Do not substitute pickled herring in vinegar or cream sauce, which is already a finished dish.
- Oven heatNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this; the fish is fully cured and needs heating through and browning rather than long cooking.
- TimingTwenty to twenty-five minutes for whole split herring, less for fillets. Salt fish dries out fast once hot, so pull it as soon as the flesh flakes.
- "Roll in flour and butter"Meaning dredged in flour and dotted or brushed with softened butter, not a batter. Pat the soaked fish thoroughly dry first or the flour will slide off.
- The very little waterThe recipe puts the water over the fish; a shallow film in the bottom of the dripping-pan is enough. It keeps the pan from scorching and steams the fish slightly, so the flour will not crisp much.
- Pepper onlyThere is no salt in the seasoning because there is no need for it. Black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of the pan liquid at the table, is the whole finish.
- YieldOne whole herring per person as a breakfast or supper dish; two if they are small. Boiled potatoes are a common partner.
Salt herring was one of the great cheap proteins of the nineteenth-century interior. Caught and cured on the Atlantic and, by the 1870s, in large quantities on the Great Lakes, it travelled inland in barrels and kept for months without ice, which is why a landlocked Ohio household could have a fish chapter at all. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled from contributions by Ohio women and published in Marysville, is full of these signed one-line receipts — Mrs. Starr appears to be writing for cooks already familiar with the ingredient rather than for a beginner. Baking was the mildest treatment for a soaked herring; broiling over coals and frying in salt pork fat were other common handlings. Cured fish of this kind was eaten at breakfast or at the evening "tea," meals where a salty fish and potatoes were unremarkable.