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Herrings, Red, Creamed
Take the required quantity of red herrings, split them open, free them from skin and bone, and pound the flesh in a mortar with a little cream, fresh butter, and cayenne pepper Make it hot in a small saucepan. Have ready some oatmeal biscuits, made hot in the oven, and spread the creamed herring upon them. Serve at once.
A Victorian savoury built on hard-cured smoked herring, which is far saltier and drier than anything sold as kipper today. The whole success of the dish rests on taming that salt before the fish goes anywhere near cream.
- What a red herring isNot a kipper. Red herrings are whole herrings salted in brine for weeks and then cold-smoked hard until the flesh is dry, mahogany-coloured and intensely salty — closer to salt cod than to smoked salmon. Look for them as hareng saur, or substitute a hard-smoked whole herring from a Baltic or North African grocer.
- Soak firstThe recipe assumes you know this and does not say it. A traditional red herring needs several hours' soaking in cold water or milk, changed once or twice, before it is edible in quantity. Taste a flake before you commit the cream: if it makes you wince, keep soaking.
- Skin and boneEasier warm. Toasting or grilling the split fish briefly loosens the skin and lets the backbone and pin bones lift out in one piece. Go over the flesh with your fingers afterwards; hard-cured herring bones stay sharp.
- "A little cream, fresh butter"No amounts are given. For roughly 4 oz of picked flesh, start with 2 tablespoons heavy cream and 1 oz softened butter and work up until it spreads without slumping. "Fresh butter" means unsalted — the point is that the fish supplies all the salt required.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does in seconds what the mortar did in minutes, but pulse rather than run it, or the paste turns to a smooth pink putty. A slightly coarse, flaky texture is what makes this worth eating.
- Warming, not cookingThe fish is already fully cured and needs only to be brought hot in the pan. Keep the heat gentle and stir; cream and butter held over a brisk flame will split, and the paste turns grainy and oily.
- Oatmeal biscuitsScottish oatcakes, not sweet oatmeal cookies. Warm them at 350F for five minutes to crisp them, and top them at the last moment — the hot paste softens them quickly.
- Yield and place at tableFour ounces of herring flesh gives about eight to ten small oatcakes. This is a savoury, served in a Victorian dinner after the sweet course, or equally well now with a glass of dry sherry.
The red herring earned its name from the colour hard smoking gives the skin, and its long shelf life made it a cheap and durable staple in northern Europe from the Middle Ages onward — durable enough to travel inland, keep through Lent, and provision a ship. The figurative sense of a false trail is popularly traced to the herring's pungency, said to have been used to lay a scent for training hounds, but that account is folk tradition rather than documented; the culinary object certainly came centuries before the metaphor. Recipes like this one show a standard Victorian treatment of a cheap salt-cured item: pound it with cream and butter, add cayenne, spread it on something crisp, and serve it as a savoury at the end of a formal dinner. Potted and creamed fish pastes of this type were a common savoury-course dish before commercial jars took the work over.