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Mackerel, Boiled (Large fresh fish should be)
Large fresh fish should be procured for broiling. Cleanse the fish thoroughly, and dry in a cloth, or hang it up in the air. Open it down the back, rub the inside with a little salt and cayenne mixed, and smear with clarified butter or good oil. Put it into a thickly-buttered paper, loosely fastened at each end, and broil over a clear fire, or it may be broiled without the paper, though the former mode renders the fish so cooked more delicate, and not so apt to disagree with the stomach as when exposed to the fire uncovered. Time, twenty to twenty-five minutes in paper; fifteen to twenty minutes to broil without paper. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d. each.
The heading says boiled but the text describes broiling — that is, cooking over open coals. Read it as a grilled mackerel and it is entirely workable.
- "Broil" means grillIn a British book of this date broiling is done on a gridiron over a clear, low-flaming fire. A charcoal grill or a ridged grill pan gives the nearest result; an overhead oven broiler works but browns the skin without the smoke.
- Open it down the backSplit the fish along the back and open it out flat so it cooks evenly at one thickness; the backbone can be left in or lifted out. Ask the fishmonger to do it if you prefer, specifying split or butterflied rather than filleted.
- The times are too longTwenty-five minutes will dry out any mackerel of ordinary size. A butterflied fish of 12–14 oz needs roughly 4–5 minutes skin-side down and 2–3 minutes on the flesh side; it is done when the thickest part just flakes. The old times probably assume a cooler, less direct fire, and the recipe does specify a large fish.
- The buttered paperUse parchment, not modern greaseproof-substitute wax paper, and butter it heavily as instructed. It steams as much as it grills, which is the "more delicate" result the author means; foil does the same job but blocks all browning.
- Clarified butterWorth making rather than substituting whole butter, since the milk solids in the latter scorch on a grill. Melt butter gently, skim, and pour off the clear fat.
- Salt and cayenneA scant teaspoon of salt and a pinch of cayenne is enough for one fish. Mackerel is rich and takes assertive seasoning; common period accompaniments include a sharp gooseberry sauce or mustard butter.
- Freshness is not optionalMackerel deteriorates faster than almost any other fish, which is why the recipe opens by insisting on it. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean smell; soft, dull fish is not worth grilling.
- YieldOne butterflied mackerel serves one as a main course, or two as part of a larger meal. The "probable cost, 4d. to 6d. each" is a per-fish price from the book's own period and has no useful modern equivalent.
Mackerel was the cheap, abundant, highly perishable fish of the Victorian street trade — so perishable that London hawkers were long permitted to cry it on Sundays when other street selling was restricted, a licence usually traced to the fish's habit of spoiling before Monday. That perishability explains why Cassell's opens not with method but with the demand for large, fresh fish. The buttered paper wrapper is a domestic form of what French cookery calls en papillote, used here for a practical reason as much as a refined one: it keeps the oily flesh from flaring on the coals. The claim that paper-cooked fish is "not so apt to disagree with the stomach" reflects the period's persistent suspicion of rich, oily fish, a piece of received dietary wisdom rather than anything demonstrated.