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Roes, Mackerel., in Cases
Take six very fresh soft-roed mackerel. Broil them till well done, then take out the roes and put them into small cases with parsley chopped fine, a little rasped crust of bread, salt, pepper, and a little butter; then put them into the oven; when they are very hot, send them to table with a little white sharp sauce, and the juice of a lemon. This will only make a small dish: when you want to make it larger, put more soft roes, and use the mackerel for fillets as a fish-dish.
A Victorian savoury built on a by-product: the roes are the dish, the fish itself is a leftover to be served separately. Most of the work is in sourcing.
- Soft roe means miltSoft roe is the sperm sac of the male fish, creamy and pale, not the granular hard roe of the female. Fishmongers sell it frozen more often than fresh; ask for milt if "soft roe" draws a blank.
- Buy mackerel very fresh, and mean itThe instruction is not decorative. Mackerel is a dark-fleshed scombroid fish that develops histamine rapidly once it warms, and histamine is not destroyed by cooking. Buy it stiff, bright-eyed and cold, and keep it on ice until it goes under the grill.
- CasesSmall ovenproof ramekins, cocottes or the pleated paper cases used for baked savouries. Anything holding about 60-80 ml per portion works.
- Rasped crustDry crust grated on a rasp or fine grater, effectively coarse dry breadcrumbs. Panko is close in texture; commercial fine golden crumbs are drier and duller.
- BroilIn this book that is grilling under direct heat, not American oven-broiling exclusively, though a hot overhead element does the same job. Five to six minutes a side for a whole mackerel of average size.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the cases only need heating through. A hot oven will brown the crumbs in a few minutes; the roes are already cooked, having been broiled inside the fish, so this is a reheating and browning step, not further cooking.
- White sharp sauceA plain white or veloute sauce sharpened with lemon juice or a little vinegar, in the direction of a sauce piquante. Season it more assertively than seems right; soft roe is bland and rich.
- YieldThe recipe specifies six soft-roed fish, so six roes (each a pair of lobes) — which is why it warns it makes only a small dish. Treat it as a savoury course or appetiser for three or four, with the filleted fish served separately.
Mackerel was among the cheapest of the prized sea fish in nineteenth-century Britain, so oily and so quick to spoil that London street sellers were permitted to cry it on Sundays, when most other hawking was forbidden; milk was similarly excepted. That perishability made mackerel a fish of the coast and the fast railway line, and its roes something best used while the fish was very fresh. Serving them in individual cases, breadcrumbed and sharpened with lemon, belongs to the tradition of the English savoury, the small hot dish that came near the end of a formal dinner. Cassell's folds the broiled fish itself into a second dish of fillets so that nothing is wasted.