Conway Tearle
PICKLED HERRING
12 fresh herring. 6 small onions. 10 bay leaves Red and black pepper to taste 1 teaspoon whole cloves and allspice Clean the herring and sprinkle with salt. Place a layer of them in a stone dish. Cover with a layer of the sliced onions and sprinkle with spice and bay leaves. Repeat until dish is full. Cover with vinegar, season and cover with a large china plate. Put in slow oven for about two hours. Remove and set to cool in the dish in which they were cooked.
These are most delicious for luncheon late at night. Very sincerely, Coway Tianle
Parboil the roe in water. Pour off water, add an ounce of butter, juice of half a lemon, salt and paprika to taste and let simmer slowly until done.
Remove roe and place on hot dish. Put into chafing dish one tablespoon each Worcestershire sauce and walnut catsup. Stir for five minutes while cooking over hot flame. Pour sauce over roe.
The In shad season this, of course, is most wonderful, but it can also be made with the canned roe. canned ones are already boiled.
Sincerely yours,
Two dishes here: a baked soused herring in the northern European manner, and a chafing-dish shad roe. Both are written as reminders rather than instructions, so the quantities need filling in.
- The missing amountsThe ingredient list gives only spices. For a dish that fills a medium baking dish, reckon on 6 to 8 cleaned herring, 2 large onions sliced thin, and enough vinegar to submerge — roughly 2 to 3 cups. Ten bay leaves is right for that scale and will not be excessive once spread through the layers.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in the 1930s ran about 4 to 5 percent acetic acid, close to today's cider or white wine vinegar. Straight distilled white vinegar is harsh here; cutting it with a third water and adding a spoon of sugar follows the sweet-sour balance usual in Scandinavian and German pickled herring.
- Slow ovenIn books of this date a slow oven is generally reckoned at about 250 to 325F; 300F is a fair reading. Two hours of low heat in vinegar softens the fine bones, and higher heat will break the fish up before they give.
- Stone dish and china plateA glazed stoneware or earthenware baking dish. The plate laid on top is a weight and a loose lid, keeping the top layer under the vinegar; a plate that sits inside the rim still works, or use a lid and a small weight. Avoid bare aluminium or cast iron, which react with the vinegar.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not sweet peppers. In American books of this period "red pepper" almost always means ground cayenne.
- Cooling and keepingCooling in the cooking liquid is not optional; that is where the flavour goes in. Refrigerate once cool and eat within four or five days. This is a soused fish, not a preserve, and nothing in the method makes it shelf-stable.
- Walnut catsupA thin, dark, salty sauce of green walnuts, vinegar and spice, once sold everywhere and now specialist. Mushroom ketchup is the closest substitute; a mix of Worcestershire and a little soy or anchovy paste gives a similar savoury note.
- Shad roe timingParboil the roe sacs gently — a bare simmer for 5 to 8 minutes depending on size — and do not let the water boil hard or the membranes burst. The butter-and-lemon simmer afterwards needs only a few minutes more. Overcooked roe turns dry and grainy.
- Sourcing shadAmerican shad stocks have declined sharply and several Atlantic fisheries are closed or tightly restricted, so fresh roe is seasonal and regional at best. The recipe's own note about canned roe, already cooked, is the practical route; it needs only the sauce.
- YieldThe herring serves 6 to 8 as a supper or luncheon dish with rye bread and boiled potatoes. One pair of shad roe sacs serves two.
Baked soused herring belongs to the North Sea and Baltic kitchen, where cheap oily fish, vinegar, onion and whole spice were layered in an earthenware crock and left in the cooling bread oven — the long, low heat being what dissolves the fine bones. Versions of it turn up as Dutch gestoofde haring, and in the pickled-herring recipes carried into American cities by Scandinavian, German and Jewish immigrants, where it became standard late-night and cold-buffet food. Conway Tearle was born in New York but raised and trained in England, and the dish reads as an English or continental supper habit rather than an American one. The book itself is a specimen of a genre that flourished from the 1910s through the 1930s: charity and promotional cookbooks that gathered signed recipes from stage and screen performers, the appeal lying less in the cooking than in the autograph — which is why the contributions are so often brief, spice-first, and vague about quantities. The signature reproduced here appears as "Coway Tianle," one of several garblings in text that has come down to us visibly scrambled.