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MACKEREL, BAKED (another way)
A quick and simple way of baking mackerel:--Put four or six middle-sized fish, after being washed and well dried, into a baking-dish, back downwards, and rounded so as to make the heads and tails meet; put the roes with them, and some flour and butter blended together in the proportion of half an ounce of butter and half a tea-spoonful of flour to each fish. Add a little salt and cayenne, a small glassful of port or sherry, and enough chilli vinegar to flavour. Bake with some bits of butter over the top, and a buttered paper pressed tightly down without crushing the fish. It is economical to remove the heads and a little of the tails of the fish before baking.
A straightforward baked mackerel that relies on a sealed dish and a sharp, spiced liquid rather than long cooking. The hinge is timing: mackerel is oily but fine-fleshed, and it goes dry and chalky within a few minutes of being done.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 375F (190C). Whole middle-sized mackerel -- assume roughly 10-12 oz each -- need about 20-25 minutes; the flesh should just part from the backbone, around 145F at the thickest point.
- Buttered paperA round of baking parchment, buttered on the underside and laid directly on the fish, does exactly what is described. It traps steam and stops the exposed skin drying. Foil works but reacts with the vinegar; parchment is better here.
- Chilli vinegarA Victorian storecupboard staple: vinegar steeped with dried red chillies. Any hot pepper vinegar will do, or steep two or three dried chillies in half a cup of cider or white wine vinegar overnight. "Enough to flavour" means a tablespoon or so for the dish, not more.
- A small glassfulRoughly 2 fl oz (a quarter cup) of port or sherry for the whole dish, not per fish. Use a dry or medium sherry unless you want the sauce noticeably sweet.
- Flour and butterHalf an ounce of butter worked with half a teaspoon of flour per fish makes a butter-and-flour paste, though far richer in butter than a classic beurre manie, and it will thicken the wine and fish juices only lightly. Blend it cold and dot it around the fish rather than trying to stir it into liquid later.
- Curling the fish"Back downwards, and rounded so as to make the heads and tails meet" means arranging each fish belly-up in a ring in the dish. If you follow the closing note and trim heads and tails, the fish will simply lie flat, which is easier to serve.
- The roesSoft or hard mackerel roes cook faster than the fish. If your fishmonger supplies them, add them for the last 10 minutes rather than at the start.
- YieldFour to six fish serves four to six as a main course with bread or boiled potatoes. Spoon the pan liquid over each portion; it is the whole point of the dish.
Cassell's gives several mackerel methods because the fish was cheap, abundant and notoriously perishable: mackerel spoils faster than almost any other British sea fish, which is why it was one of the few things exempted from the restrictions on Sunday street-selling in London. The strong flavourings here follow long-standing practice with oily fish, where acid and spice were used to cut richness. Chilli vinegar and bottled fortified wine were both cheap kitchen staples in late nineteenth-century Britain, sold by grocers alongside anchovy essence and mushroom ketchup, and the buttered paper pressed over the top is what a modern kitchen would call a cartouche.