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Boiled Salt Mackerel
After freshening wrap in a cloth and simmer for fifteen minutes; it will be almost done as soon as the water reaches the boiling point; remove, lay on it two hard-boiled eggs sliced, pour over it drawn butter, and trim with parsley leaves. Boiling salt-fish hardens it.
A short entry that assumes you already know how to freshen salt fish and make drawn butter. Both assumptions need filling in, and the last sentence of the original is the whole point of the method.
- Never let it boilThe closing line is the instruction that matters: hard boiling seizes the proteins in salted fish and turns it stringy. Hold the water at a bare shiver, with no more than an occasional bubble breaking -- roughly 170-180F if you want a number.
- "Freshening" means a long soakSalt mackerel is packed hard in salt or brine and must be soaked in several changes of cold water before cooking. Overnight in the refrigerator, skin side up so the salt falls away rather than settling back into the flesh, is standard; taste a corner of the thick part before you cook it.
- Fifteen minutes is an outside figureThe recipe admits the fish is nearly done when the water reaches a boil. A soaked fillet of ordinary thickness will be cooked through in five to eight minutes at a simmer; pull it when the flesh parts at the thickest point.
- The clothA clean square of muslin or cheesecloth, tied loosely, keeps a soft salted fillet in one piece and gives you something to lift it out by. Cheesecloth or a flat perforated poaching insert does the same job.
- Drawn butter is not clarified butterIn nineteenth-century American books drawn butter is a plain white sauce: about 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour, and a cup of hot water or the fish liquor, whisked smooth and simmered a couple of minutes. Clarified butter poured over will not read the same on the plate.
- Buying it nowSalt mackerel is still sold in Portuguese, Caribbean, Scandinavian and Chinese markets, and boneless salt mackerel fillets come vacuum-packed. Fresh mackerel is not a substitute here, since the dish depends on cured, firm flesh.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; a pair of split salt mackerel, perhaps a pound or so after soaking, would serve two to three with potatoes. The two sliced hard-boiled eggs and parsley are for the whole platter, not per person.
Salt mackerel was a staple of the American table well into the twentieth century, particularly at breakfast, and *Buckeye Cookery* was written for Ohio households a long way from any coast. Barreled salt fish was one of the few forms in which sea fish reached the interior reliably and cheaply before refrigerated rail freight became routine, which helps explain why a landlocked Midwestern book gives salted cod and mackerel such prominence in its fish chapter rather than fresh catch. The garnish of sliced hard-boiled egg with a flour-thickened butter sauce is often said to be a typical dressing of the period for boiled white or salted fish, and appears in English cookery of the same decades as egg sauce. The final warning that boiling hardens salt fish is repeated across nineteenth-century manuals; it reflects hard-won kitchen experience with a product that punishes a rolling boil more obviously than fresh fish does.