Home › The Principles of Cookery › Roes, Herring, on Toast
Roes, Herring, on Toast
Take the soft roes of six herrings, wash them well in cold salted water without breaking them. Put them into a deep dish. Put into a small saucepan half a pint of boiling water and a wineglassful of French vinegar; add a pinch of salt, six peppercorns, and three bay-leaves. As soon as it boils, skim it, and strain it over the roes. Cover the dish with a buttered paper, and put in the oven. Cook for ten minutes, then drain the roes, and put them on hot buttered toast, one roe on each piece of toast. Squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice over each, and sprinkle a little chopped parsley and cayenne pepper over them. Probable cost, 10d.
A Victorian savoury or breakfast dish that takes ten minutes and depends almost entirely on handling the roes gently. Soft roes are milt, the male herring's sperm sac, sold as "soft roe" or in Britain sometimes just "herring roe" at a fishmonger's counter.
- The hinge: do not let the roes boilThe liquid is brought to the boil, skimmed and strained over them, then the dish goes into the oven under a buttered paper rather than back onto direct heat. Cooked hard, or overcooked, they split and turn granular. The recipe gives ten minutes and no oven heat; they are done when firm and opaque throughout.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is 10 fl oz in British measure, about 1 1/4 US cups. A wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so roughly 1/4 cup vinegar. "French vinegar" indicates a wine vinegar.
- Buttered paperA sheet of parchment, buttered, laid over the dish as the recipe directs. Foil works but conducts heat more aggressively.
- Washing the roesCold water with a spoonful of salt dissolved in it, and a light hand. Any tear releases the interior and the roe will fall apart in the poaching liquid. Pat dry-ish before they go into the dish.
- SourcingSoft herring roe is seasonal and rarely in supermarkets; ask a fishmonger, or look for frozen packs, which thaw well. The recipe makes six pieces of toast, one roe on each.
- FinishingThe toast must be hot and buttered right before serving, otherwise the poaching moisture makes it limp. The cayenne is specified as 'a little', in the style of a Victorian savoury.
Herring roe on toast belongs to the family of English "savouries" — small, sharp, highly seasoned dishes served at the end of a formal dinner after the sweet, or else at breakfast and supper, where anchovy, devilled kidney and soft roes all did similar work. Cassell's places it in a period when herring were landed in enormous quantity around the British coast and were among the cheapest fish available. The vinegar, bay and peppercorn court-bouillon, followed by lemon and cayenne, is the standard Victorian treatment for anything soft and mild: acid and pepper to give a bland ingredient definition. Soft roes later fell almost entirely out of domestic use.