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Mackerel and Tomato Sauce
Chop up finely two small shallots and mix these with an ounce of bread-crumbs and the same of butter, a squeeze of lemon-juice, and pepper and salt to taste. Bone some small mackerel, and fill them with this stuffing. Wrap each in a sheet of buttered paper, bind with tape, and broil for fifteen minutes. Before dishing up remove the paper, and serve with tomato sauce.
A Victorian version of mackerel en papillote: boned fish, a shallot-crumb stuffing, and a paper wrapper that traps the steam and the oil. The wrapping is the whole point, so build it properly.
- "Broil" means grillIn Victorian usage broiling generally means cooking on a gridiron over coals, not baking. The nearest equivalents are a hot grill/broiler or a covered barbecue, and the parcels want turning halfway. A hot oven will also do the job, though you lose the scorch on the paper.
- Buttered paper, and tapeUse parchment, buttered generously on the side touching the fish, and fold and crimp the edges rather than relying on the tape. Kitchen string replaces the tape, which in the period would have been cotton tape. Do not use foil under a naked flame if the parcel is meant to brown.
- Fifteen minutes is about rightThe paper slows the heat. Small mackerel, boned and stuffed, need roughly 12-15 minutes; the flesh should be opaque at the backbone and the paper puffed and browned.
- Boning the fishThe intention is a pocketed fish, not fillets: cut along the belly, lift out the backbone and ribs from inside, leaving head, tail and skin intact. A fishmonger will do this if asked for mackerel boned for stuffing.
- Quantities and scaleAn ounce each of crumbs and butter with two shallots stuffs two, at most three, small mackerel. Multiply the stuffing for four fish; the butter should bind the crumbs into a soft paste, not a dough.
- Shallots raw in the stuffingFifteen minutes inside a paper parcel will not tame raw shallot much. Sweating them in the butter first, then stirring in the crumbs, gives a rounder flavour and is closer to what the tomato sauce expects.
- The tomato sauceTomato sauce of this period was generally a cooked, sieved puree thickened with a little roux and stock, not bottled ketchup. Something sharp and thin -- tomatoes reduced with a shallot and a spoon of stock, then sieved -- cuts the oil of the fish.
- YieldFour stuffed small mackerel serve four as a main course, two apiece if the fish are very small. Serve the parcels closed at table and open them there if you prefer; the aroma is the best part.
Cooking fish in a buttered paper case is the French en papillote, and mackerel is one of the fish it suits best: the flesh is oily and dries out fast over open coals, while the parcel keeps every drop of fat and juice against the fish. Mackerel also spoils faster than almost any other market fish, which is why Victorian cookery books treat it as a dish for the day it is bought and why it was traditionally cried in the streets on Sundays when other trading was forbidden. The pairing with a sharp tomato sauce reflects a late nineteenth-century shift: tomatoes had moved from suspicion to staple in British kitchens, and a sharp tomato sauce did much the same acid job as the older gooseberry or sorrel sauces long served with rich fish.