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Potted Fresh Fish
Let the fish lie in salt water for several hours; then for five pounds fish take three ounces salt, two of ground black pepper, two of cinnamon, one of allspice, and a half ounce cloves; cut fish in slices, and place in the jar in which it is to be cooked, first a layer of fish, then the spices, flour and bits of butter sprinkled on, repeating till done. Fill the jar with equal parts vinegar and water, cover closely with a cloth well floured on top so that no steam can escape, and bake six hours. Let it remain in jar until cold, cut in slices, and serve for tea. - Mrs. L. Brown.
A spiced vinegar bake of the soused-herring family, written for a stoneware crock set in a cooling range oven. The method transfers cleanly to a Dutch oven, but the spice weights need reading carefully.
- The spices are weights, not volumesTwo ounces of ground cinnamon is roughly half a cup, and two ounces of black pepper about the same: enormous by modern palates. A third of these quantities gives a recognizable result; cut the cloves hardest, as half an ounce is about two tablespoons.
- Salt and the soakThree ounces of salt per five pounds of fish is about a third of a cup, on top of a several-hour brine in salt water. If your fish has already sat in salt water for hours, use half the dry salt or the finished dish will be inedibly salty.
- "The jar"A tall stoneware crock or bean pot. A deep enameled Dutch oven or a narrow ceramic casserole works, and helps the layers stay submerged in the vinegar and water.
- Sealing with floured clothThe cloth was pasted down with flour to make a steam-tight lid, the same trick used for suet puddings. A lid with a sheet of parchment or foil crimped under it does the same job; the point is that nothing escapes, so the liquid stays put for six hours.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; the recipe assumes a range oven judged by feel. For six hours in a covered vessel, a low oven of about 300F is a workable modern equivalent, and the long bake in acid will likely soften the bones as in soused mackerel or herring, though the recipe does not say so.
- Which fishSmall oily fish take best to this treatment: mackerel, herring, alewives, whitefish. Lean flaky fish such as cod will collapse to shreds over six hours.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century cider vinegar was far less standardized than today's 5 percent and often weaker. Equal parts vinegar and water with modern vinegar is sharp; the finished fish is meant to be tart.
- Serving and keepingFive pounds of fish makes a great deal — enough for a dozen at a cold supper. "Serve for tea" means the light evening meal, sliced cold with bread and butter. Once cool, keep it refrigerated and eat within a few days; the vinegar helps but this was never a shelf-stable preserve.
Sousing was the English answer to a glut of fish before refrigeration: bake or simmer it long enough in vinegar and spice that the bones give way, then let it set in its own liquor and eat it cold over the following days. The technique is old enough to appear in seventeenth-century English receipt books, and though the recipe's own title uses the word "potting," that term more usually describes fish or meat packed and sealed under clarified butter. Its presence in Buckeye Cookery (1877), a Midwestern household compilation built from contributed receipts signed with their donors' names, reflects a landlocked kitchen making the most of freshwater catch and cheap barreled fish — and the sheer volume of cinnamon, pepper and cloves reflects how much cheaper ground spice had become by the 1870s than it had been a century earlier.