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Mackerel, Soused
Boil, without breaking, two or three middling-sized mackerel, remove the bones, and split the fish carefully down the back. Simmer gently in a pint of vinegar and water mixed, in equal quantities, a bay-leaf, half a dozen whole peppers, two Jamaica peppers, a pinch of cayenne, and a little salt. Pour this liquor when cold over the fish: if put in a deep dish they will be covered with it, and should not be served until they have steeped some hours. Serve with fennel as a garnish, on a flat dish. Time, fifteen minutes to boil. Simmer spice for five minutes.
A cold vinegar-steeped mackerel, closer to a pickle than a poach. The method is sound; only the timings and a couple of ingredient names need translating.
- The hinge: don't overcook the fishFifteen minutes at a boil will shred mackerel and drive out its oil. Bring the water barely to a tremble, slide the fish in, and give a middling mackerel (about 3/4 lb) 8-10 minutes at a bare simmer, or cover and take the pan off the heat entirely. The fish then firms further as it sits in the acid.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice berries. Two whole berries for a pint of liquor is restrained; the "whole peppers" alongside are black peppercorns.
- VinegarMalt vinegar was the usual English household vinegar of the period and gives the sharp, brown-pickle character, though wine vinegar was also used. Cider vinegar works; distilled white is harsher and flatter. Equal parts vinegar and water gives roughly 2.5 to 3 percent acidity in the finished liquor if the vinegar is a standard 5 percent — a seasoning strength, not a preserving strength.
- Use a non-reactive dishHot spiced vinegar will pick up metal from aluminium, copper or bare cast iron. Simmer the spice in stainless or enamel and steep the fish in glass, glazed earthenware or plastic.
- Cool the liquor before it meets the fishThe instruction "pour this liquor when cold" is deliberate. Hot vinegar continues to cook the outside of the fillets and makes them chalky; cold liquor lets them absorb spice without further tightening.
- BoningSplit and lift the backbone out while the fish is still warm and it comes away in one piece, taking most of the pin bones with it. Left to go fully cold, the flesh sets around them.
- Steeping and keeping"some hours" is unspecified; four hours is a sensible practical minimum and overnight is better. This is a refrigerator dish, not a shelf-stable one — the liquor is too weak and the dish unsealed to preserve. Eat within three days.
- Fennel garnishFeathery fronds, not the bulb; Florence fennel was not a common English vegetable at this date, whereas the herb was long established. Dill fronds are an acceptable stand-in.
- YieldTwo or three fish, split, serve four as a first course or light lunch with brown bread and butter.
Sousing — cooking something and then steeping it in spiced vinegar — was one of the standard English answers to an oily fish that spoils fast. Mackerel goes off notoriously quickly, which is why it was long one of the few fish permitted to be hawked in London streets on a Sunday, and why so many nineteenth-century recipes for it involve vinegar, gooseberries, or some other sharp foil for the oil. It is a plain dish: it needs no stock, no sauce and no last-minute attention, and it is eaten cold. The kinship with Continental escabeche and with Dutch and Scandinavian pickled herring is generally acknowledged, though sousing in England is old enough that no single line of descent can be claimed for it.