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Mackerel, Fillets Of
Put a tea-cupful of stock and bechamel sauce mixed into a stewpan. Add a lump of butter, about an ounce, some chopped parsley previously scalded, salt, and cayenne. Cut two fine fresh mackerel into fillets, having first well cleansed them. Put the fillets into the sauce, and simmer over a slow fire until done, when place them on a hot dish before the fire. Thicken the liquor with a little flour, boil it up, and pour it over the fillets, with a squeeze of lemon-juice, if liked. Time to simmer, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 7d.
A simple poach in a light sauce, but the stated time is the one thing to ignore: mackerel fillets are done in minutes, not twenty.
- The timingTwenty minutes of simmering will reduce mackerel fillets to shreds and squeeze out their oil. Skin-on fillets from a 12 oz fish need 4 to 6 minutes at a bare simmer, and are done when the flesh turns opaque and parts at the flake. Whatever the book intended by a "slow fire", the figure is far too long over a modern ring.
- A tea-cupfulA Victorian teacupful is usually reckoned at somewhere between 5 and 6 fl oz, so call it 2/3 to 3/4 cup of stock and bechamel combined. It should come no more than halfway up the fillets; this is a shallow poach, not a stew.
- BechamelIn Victorian usage bechamel is the white sauce built on a butter-and-flour roux with milk or cream, often enriched with a little veal or fish stock. A few tablespoons of a loose, well-seasoned bechamel is all that is wanted here. Fish stock is the better choice for the stock half.
- Scalded parsleyPouring boiling water over the chopped parsley sets its colour and softens the raw green edge. Thirty seconds is enough; drain and press it dry or it will thin the sauce.
- Thickening at the endFlour stirred straight into hot liquor lumps and tastes pasty unless it is properly boiled out. Work the flour into an equal weight of soft butter first, whisk in the pellets off the heat, then bring to a boil for a minute or two to cook the starch.
- Choosing the fishMackerel spoils faster than almost any fish on the slab; the emphasis on "fine fresh" is not decoration. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean sea smell, and cook it the day you buy it.
- CayenneCayenne here is a seasoning, not a heat note. A pinch measured between finger and thumb lifts the sauce; more will fight the lemon.
- Yield and costTwo mackerel give four fillets, enough for two as a main course or four as a first course. The 1s 7d is the book's own costing for the finished dish, sauce included, and is not a price for the fish alone.
Mackerel was the classic cheap, perishable fish of the British coast, and it held a peculiar legal privilege: a statute of 1698 allowed it to be cried in the streets of London on a Sunday, outside the hours of divine service ishability to go off so quickly that a day's delay ruined the catch is often said to be the reason. The dressing here, a poach in stock and bechamel finished with parsley and lemon, is the standard nineteenth-century English answer to an oily fish: something acid and something creamy, working against the richness. Mackerel's older partner was gooseberry sauce, a pairing generally traced to the fish and the fruit coming into season together in early summer, and the squeeze of lemon in this recipe does the same job by simpler means.