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Herrings, Fresh, Broiled
Fresh herrings are better for broiling when they have been salted for a night, as this both renders them firmer and improves their flavour. Scale and gut the fish without opening them, score them to the bone in two or three places, draw them through oil on a dish, and broil them over a clear fire. Lift them gently now and then, to prevent their sticking to the bars, and when one side is done enough, turn the fish gently to the other. Serve immediately. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over the herrings before sending them to table. The roes must be fried and served with them. Time, about fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. each. Sufficient, half a dozen for three persons.
A gridiron recipe from the age of open coal fires; the method transfers cleanly to a grill or ridged pan, but the timing does not.
- The overnight saltThis is the step that makes the dish. A light dry-salting — a generous scattering of coarse salt inside and out, refrigerated overnight, then rinsed and patted dry — firms the flesh of an oily fish that otherwise falls apart on the bars. It is seasoning and texture insurance, not preservation.
- Fifteen minutes is too longA whole herring of 8-10 oz needs roughly 4 minutes a side under a hot grill or on a ridged pan, 5 at most. The original time assumes a solid-fuel fire whose heat the cook judged by eye. Go by the flesh at the score marks: opaque and just parting from the backbone.
- Score to the boneTwo or three slashes through the thickest part let heat into the centre before the skin blackens, and give the oil and salt somewhere to go. Do not skip them on a large fish.
- "Draw them through oil"Pour a little oil onto a flat dish and drag each fish through it so the skin is filmed rather than coated. Brushing works as well. The recipe does not say which oil.
- Gutting without openingThe instruction means removing the guts through the gill opening and a small vent cut, leaving the belly wall intact so the fish holds together. A conventionally split-bellied herring will still broil, but handle it with two fish slices.
- The roesSoft (milt) or hard roes were kept back and fried; the recipe does not say in what, nor for how long. A couple of minutes a side is enough. Modern whole herring are often sold without them; ask the fishmonger, or omit rather than substitute.
- YieldSix fish for three people, as stated, is a Victorian portion. Two whole herring each is a substantial main course; one apiece with bread and butter is a reasonable modern serving.
- CostA penny or three-halfpence each, as the recipe states, is strikingly cheap for a whole fish.
Herring was the working fish of nineteenth-century Britain, landed in vast quantities along the east coast of Scotland and England and carried inland by rail, which is why a book like Cassell's can quote a price of a penny a fish without comment. The Scottish boats followed the shoals south through the season, trailed by crews of gutters and packers, and the catch that was not salted into barrels for export went out fresh to the towns. Broiling over a clear fire, with lemon and the fried roes alongside, is the plainest treatment of an oily fish that needs no sauce and little fat; the same fish smoked became the kipper and the bloater, both of which have their own entries in books of this period. The overnight salting recommended here may perhaps be read as a domestic echo of the trade's own habit of salting herring the moment they came ashore, though the connection is inference rather than established fact.