Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mackerel, Fricasseed
Mackerel, Fricasseed
Pound a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley with a small quantity of shallot, an ounce of butter, a table-spoonful of anchovy essence, two table-spoonfuls of ketchup, and an ounce of flour. Gradually stir this into a pint of good brown gravy, stirring it till it almost boils. Add a glass of port, lay in it the fillets of two mackerel, and stew for fifteen minutes. Lift out the fillets and lay them on a hot dish. Add to the gravy a tea-spoonful of French mustard and a dessert-spoonful of ketchup, and when just on boiling point pour over the fillets. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, and serve.
A late-Victorian fish dish built on the brown-sauce repertoire rather than anything cream-based, despite the name. Two things need attention before you start: what "ketchup" meant in 1890, and how long mackerel can stand in hot liquid.
- The pounded paste is a beurre maniéButter, flour, parsley, shallot and the flavourings are worked to a smooth paste, then stirred into hot gravy to thicken it. Add it in small pieces and whisk each one in fully, or the flour will set in lumps that no amount of stirring will break down.
- Ketchup does not mean tomatoIn Victorian cookery books unqualified "ketchup" usually means mushroom ketchup, a thin, dark, salty, intensely savoury liquid still sold in Britain. Walnut ketchup was the other common option. Tomato ketchup here would make the sauce sweet and cloying; use mushroom ketchup or, at a pinch, a little Worcestershire sauce plus a splash of soy.
- Anchovy essenceA concentrated anchovy sauce, still available bottled. A teaspoon of anchovy paste thinned with water is a workable stand-in for the tablespoon called for.
- Spoon and glass measuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. A "glass" of port in this period is a wine glass of roughly 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so a scant third of a cup. A pint of gravy is 20 fl oz British measure, about 2.5 US cups.
- Good brown gravyProbably not just pan drippings but a stock-based brown sauce of the kind the period called espagnole. A well-made dark beef or veal stock reduced until it coats a spoon will serve; instant granules will not stand up to the anchovy, port and mustard.
- Fifteen minutes is too longMackerel fillets are thin and oily and will be cooked through in five to seven minutes in barely simmering sauce, and will shred if pushed further. Keep the liquid below a simmer and lift the fillets out as soon as the flesh is opaque and just parts.
- Finish off the heatFrench mustard is a smooth Dijon-style mustard; boiling drives off its pungency. Bring the sauce back to just under boiling, stir in the mustard and the last of the ketchup, and pour immediately.
- The ParmesanA dry sprinkle over the sauced fillets, not a gratin. If you want it browned, a minute under a hot grill is enough; longer and the sauce will split.
- YieldTwo mackerel give four fillets, which serves two generously or four as a first course.
"Fricassee" in English cookery originally meant meat cut up and stewed in a sauce, and only later narrowed to the pale, cream-and-egg-yolk chicken dish most cooks now picture; Victorian books happily applied it to fish in a dark sauce, as here. The combination of brown gravy, port, anchovy and mushroom ketchup is a common nineteenth-century English fish-sauce accent, following the eighteenth-century habit of keeping bottled ketchups and essences on hand to give body and depth to made dishes at short notice. Mackerel is oily, spoils faster than almost any other market fish, and was cheap enough in season to be cried in the streets; cookery writers of the period commonly gave it strong sauces. The Parmesan finish reflects the period's fondness for a cheese-dusted top on savoury dishes.