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Herrings, Potted
Empty the fish, clean without washing them, cut off the heads and tails, remove the back-bone, and strew over them a little salt and powdered mace. Let them remain three or four hours, then wipe off the seasoning and put the fish into a well-buttered pan; strew pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg over them, place small lumps of butter here and there upon them, and bake in a moderate oven. When they are cooked enough, drain the liquid from them, pour sufficient clarified butter over them to cover them completely, and keep in a cool place. Time, two hours to bake. Probable cost of herrings, 9d. per dozen. Sufficient, half a dozen for three persons.
This is a preserving recipe rather than a supper dish: the point of the clarified butter is to seal the fish from air so it will keep. That seal, combined with storage in a "cool place" and no measured cure, is what makes the method unsafe now.
- The butter seal is the problemFat poured over cooked fish to cover it completely creates an oxygen-free environment. Clostridium botulinum spores survive baking and grow in exactly those conditions, producing toxin without any smell, gas or off taste to warn the cook. Potted fish and potted meats under butter are a recognised botulism vehicle.
- "A cool place" is not coldIn a Victorian house this meant a larder, cellar or slate shelf, which would generally have sat well above modern refrigeration temperature. Botulinum can grow above about 38F, so the storage condition the recipe assumes is one that permits growth over days or weeks.
- No measured cureThe salt and mace rubbed on for three or four hours are seasoning, not preservation. The quantities are not given, the salt is wiped off before baking, and no nitrite is used, so nothing in the method inhibits spore growth.
- "Clean without washing"The fish are gutted and wiped rather than rinsed. Whatever the reason, it means gut bacteria and surface contamination are only ever addressed by the bake, which does nothing to spores.
- No holding time givenThe recipe never says how long the pots will keep, and offers no test for spoilage. The instruction carries no margin for a modern reader.
- If you want potted herringUse a current recipe with refrigerated storage and a stated short shelf life. Nothing here should be adapted.
- Reading the originalThe 'probable cost' of 9d. per dozen puts herring among the cheapest fish of the period. "Sufficient, half a dozen for three persons" gives the scale: two whole boned herrings each.
Potting was the English answer to the problem of a glut, and herring produced gluts on a scale no other fish matched: the autumn shoals off Yarmouth and the Scottish east coast landed more than could be sold fresh inland before the railways, and far more than a household could eat at once. Salting, smoking into bloaters and kippers, and potting under butter all did the same work of stretching the catch. Potting was applied to beef, tongue, shrimps, lampreys and game as well as fish: cook the flesh with spice, pack it down, and pour clarified butter over the top so the air is shut out. The spicing here -- mace, nutmeg, pepper -- is a common English potting mixture, and similar combinations appear in seventeenth-century receipts; its survival into a late-Victorian cookery book shows how long the method outlived the necessity for it. It is printed as a matter of course, alongside the price per dozen, for readers who still expected to put food by at home.