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Bloaters on Toast
Remove the skin and bones from the bloaters, cut the flesh into neat pieces, dip these in melted butter, sprinkle with pepper and finely minced parsley, and cook these in the oven for about eight minutes, then place them on small rounds of buttered toast, garnish with parsley, and serve at once.
A savoury course dish of the kind served at the end of a Victorian dinner, or at breakfast. Everything depends on what a bloater actually is.
- What a bloater isA whole herring, lightly salted for a matter of hours and cold-smoked ungutted, so the flesh stays plump and gamey rather than dry. It is smoked but not cooked, which is why the recipe puts it in the oven. Ask a fishmonger, or substitute kippers, which are split, gutted and more heavily cured.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Use a moderate oven, 350F, and eight minutes will cook pieces of herring fillet through; the flesh should be opaque and flake apart. Thicker pieces need a couple of minutes more.
- Bone it before cooking, not afterThe instruction to skin and bone first is the hinge. Herring has a dense row of fine pin bones along the flank; work along them with the tip of a knife while the fish is raw and firm, since cooked bloater flakes apart and the bones become almost impossible to find.
- No saltThe cure already carries plenty. Pepper and parsley only, and taste the butter you use — salted butter can push the dish over.
- Melted butter, not softenedDipping in melted butter gives a thin coating that sets in the oven and stops the flesh drying. Brushing works as well; the point is complete coverage of the cut surfaces.
- Toast timingCut and butter the rounds while the fish is in the oven. Bloater flesh loses its texture as it cools and the whole thing is meant to go to table hot, which is what "serve at once" is doing there.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a rough guide two bloaters, boned and cut up, will cover somewhere around eight small rounds, enough for three or four as a savoury or two at breakfast.
Bloaters were the mildest of the English herring cures, associated above all with Great Yarmouth, where the autumn herring fishery landed enormous catches through the nineteenth century. The name is generally traced to the swelling of the fish during its short, damp cure hough the derivation is not settled — it is left whole and ungutted, and the action of the gut enzymes is usually credited with the flesh's distinctive high, faintly gamey flavour, quite unlike a kipper. Because the cure was brief, bloaters did not keep well, and they were eaten chiefly within reach of the coast and the railways that served it. Serving them boned on small buttered rounds is consistent with the savoury course, which came after the sweets and before dessert at a formal dinner.