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MACKEREL, FILLETS OF, STEWED (another way)
Dissolve two ounces of butter in a stewpan, with nearly a dessert-spoonful of flour, and mix them together until smooth. Add half the rind of a lemon, a tea-spoonful of soy, a salt-spoonful of pounded mace, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and a little stock or water. Into this sauce place fillets from two fresh mackerel. Shake the pan over the fire to get the fish equally covered with the sauce, turning them in about eight or ten minutes. When they are done enough, remove the fillets to a hot dish, boil up the sauce with a small wine-glassful of port, and pour it hot over the fish. Time, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. exclusive of wine. Sufficient for three persons.
A quick brown-butter sauce built in the pan, with the fish poached in it. The main correction is timing: Victorian fillet timings assume thicker, less carefully cut pieces than a modern fishmonger's.
- The timingMackerel fillets from two fish are thin and oily, and over a gentle heat a modern fishmonger's fillets will be done in about five to eight minutes, turning once. The recipe's own instruction to turn them at eight to ten minutes, within a total of fifteen to twenty, implies thicker pieces and a slower pan than we would use; watch the fish rather than the clock, or it will dry out and flake apart.
- Spoon measuresA dessert-spoon is about 2 teaspoons, so "nearly a dessert-spoonful of flour" is a scant 2 teaspoons against 2 oz (55 g) butter -- a loose roux that will barely thicken. A salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon.
- SoyThe "soy" of Victorian kitchens was imported soy sauce, thicker and saltier than most supermarket bottles today. A teaspoon of a dark Chinese soy or tamari is closest; with it plus half a teaspoon of salt the sauce is already well seasoned, so taste before adding more.
- Lemon rind"Half the rind of a lemon" most likely means a pared strip of peel with no white pith, added for perfume, rather than grated zest stirred through. The recipe does not say to remove it, but it is easily lifted out before the sauce is poured over.
- MacePounded mace is the ground outer covering of nutmeg -- warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself. Ground mace from a jar loses its scent quickly, so a fresh jar makes a noticeable difference in a sauce this plain.
- The wine-glassfulA small wine-glass in this period is about 2 fl oz (60 ml). Boiling the port down with the pan sauce after the fish comes out is what gives the finished sauce its gloss and body; do not skip that reduction.
- Stock or water"A little" means enough to make a shallow braising liquid, not enough to cover the fillets; the recipe gives no quantity. The fish steams as much as it poaches, which is why the pan is shaken to keep them coated.
- Buying the fishMackerel is high in oil and spoils faster than white fish; look for bright, firm flesh and a clean smell, and cook it the day it is bought. Two fish yield four fillets, which the original rightly calls enough for three.
Mackerel was cheap, landed in quantity along the English and Irish coasts, and arrived in inland markets by rail through the second half of the nineteenth century. Its oiliness made it a fish that had to be sold and eaten fast, and London's Sunday trading restrictions exempted mackerel, which could still be cried in the streets when other trades were closed. The sauce here shows the standard Victorian answer to a rich fish: acid and spice to cut it, in this case lemon peel and mace, plus two bottled flavourings common in the period's store cupboard -- soy, imported through the East India trade and by then also imitated in England, and port, which turned up in fish and meat sauces far more often than modern cooks would expect. The "probable cost, 1s. 6d." is characteristic of the book, which gives a probable cost for nearly every dish so that a household could budget from its pages.