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Mackerel Roe, Sauce Of
Get roes from the male fish. Boil two or three for ten minutes in water, then pound them with the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs. Have ready some fennel sauce, or parsley and butter, into which stir the mackerel roe, adding a little walnut ketchup, pepper, salt, and vinegar, if required. The butter must be thin enough to allow of the thickening quality of the roes and egg-yolks. Time, ten minutes to boil.
A thickened butter sauce built on soft mackerel roe, meant to be served with the fish it came from. The whole thing hangs on the sauce base being loose enough to accept the roe and egg yolk without turning to paste.
- "Roes from the male fish"This means soft roe, or milt — the creamy white lobes, not the granular orange hard roe of the female. Fishmongers sell it as soft roe or laitance; herring soft roe is the usual modern substitute and behaves the same way.
- Ten minutes is longSoft roe sets and turns opaque in a few minutes in barely simmering water, so the full ten will break the lobes up and press out moisture. Since they are to be pounded anyway, the loss is more likely to be of flavour than of texture.
- Fennel sauceIn this period that is a plain butter sauce or thin white sauce with blanched, finely chopped fennel leaf stirred through — not the bulb, and not a cream reduction. Reckon on about a tablespoon of chopped herb to a cup of sauce.
- Parsley and butterThe Victorian standby: melted butter thickened with a little flour, thinned with water or fish cooking liquor, with chopped parsley added at the end. It is a sauce, not compound butter.
- Walnut ketchupA thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts, vinegar and spice, still made by a few British producers. Mushroom ketchup is the closest common stand-in; a few drops of Worcestershire or anchovy essence will give the same savoury lift. It is not tomato ketchup.
- Get the consistency right firstThe roe and two egg yolks together thicken considerably. Start with a sauce noticeably thinner than you want to serve — closer to pouring cream — and let the pounded mixture bring it up. Once it is in, warm it through gently and do not let it boil, or the yolks will curdle.
- PoundingA mortar gives the smoothest result; a small food processor or a fine sieve works as well. Push the mixture through a sieve afterwards if you want it slick rather than grainy.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity for the sauce base or number of servings; two or three roes with two yolks will enrich a modest quantity of sauce to serve alongside grilled or boiled mackerel.
Mackerel and fennel is a long-established English pairing, traditionally said to reach back to medieval cookery and still standard in the nineteenth century, when mackerel came into London markets in spring and, spoiling fast, had to be sold at once. Soft roe was valued in its own right — fried on toast, or, as here, worked into the sauce. The walnut ketchup is the period marker: before tomato ketchup took over the word, English kitchens kept bottles of walnut and mushroom ketchup as all-purpose savoury seasonings, reached for here much as a modern cook reaches for Worcestershire sauce.