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Mackerel, Pickled
Boil six mackerel in salt and water; when done, take them up, and lay them in a deep earthenware dish. Add three-quarters of a pint of vinegar, a quarter of an ounce of whole black pepper, and three bay-leaves to the liquor the fish was cooked in. Let it boil for seven or eight minutes, and when quite cold, pour it over the mackerel, cover down tightly, and in twenty-four hours the fish will be ready for use. Time, fifteen to twenty minutes to boil. Probable cost, 2s. 8d.
A cold vinegar pickle for cooked fish, meant to be eaten within days rather than stored. Two things carry it: the fish should be barely cooked, and the liquor must be completely cold when it goes over them.
- Pour it coldThe instruction to cool the liquor before pouring is the hinge. Hot vinegar poured over already-cooked mackerel drives the flesh to shreds and squeezes out moisture; cold liquor lets the fish take up flavour while staying intact.
- Cut the boiling timeFifteen to twenty minutes will reduce whole mackerel to cotton. Bring salted water to a bare simmer and give whole fish of about 12 oz roughly 8-10 minutes, or fillets 3-4 minutes, until the flesh just parts from the backbone.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint of vinegar is 15 fl oz, near enough 1 3/4 US cups. A quarter ounce of whole black peppercorns is about 7 g, or a slightly heaped tablespoon.
- Which vinegarVictorian household vinegar was usually malt, and malt is still the right choice for the flavour. Cider vinegar works; strengths varied then and vary now, so avoid anything labelled below 5 percent acidity, since the acid is doing the preserving work here.
- The dishEarthenware or glass, not metal. The vinegar will pick up a tinny taste from aluminium or bare steel over 24 hours. A glass loaf dish or a wide ceramic bowl with a plate on top does the job.
- KeepingThis is a short pickle, not a preserve. The original assumed a cold larder and quick eating. Refrigerate it, keep the fish submerged, and use within three or four days.
- Yield and servingSix mackerel serve six as a first course or light supper dish, with brown bread and butter. Lift the fish from the liquor and let some of the pepper and bay cling to it.
Soused or pickled mackerel belongs to a large family of vinegar-preserved fish dishes found all round the North Sea and the Channel, and its logic is simple: mackerel is an oily fish that spoils faster than almost anything else landed in Britain, so a glut had to be dealt with the day it arrived. Mackerel was so perishable that London hawkers were permitted to cry it on Sundays -- an exemption deriving from the Sunday Observance Act of 1677 and still in force through the nineteenth century -- which is often cited as evidence of how quickly the catch had to be moved. Cassell's gives the dish in its plainest form -- boil, spice the cooking liquor with vinegar and bay, cool, pour -- and the modest costing marks it as everyday food rather than a cook's set piece. The same method appears in earlier English books under the name "to souse mackerel," sometimes with mace or sliced onion added, and it survives today in the pickled herring and mackerel of northern European delicatessens.