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Baked Fresh Mackerel with Oyster Dressing
Scrape and clean the fish; make an opening in the side and remove the entrails, cut off the head and tail. Wash well in cold water and fill the opening with a dressing made of 1 dozen oysters, chopped, and 1 teacupful of bread crumbs, the chopped yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs. Season with a half teaspoonful of onion juice, a tablespoonful of butter, a little minced parsley, salt, and pepper. Add the yolk of 1 raw egg, mix well together, and fill the fish. Sew up the opening or skewer it together, with small skewers or modern toothpicks.
Lay the fish on a well-buttered baking sheet, put it in the dripping-pan, and dredge with flour, and pour around it a cupful of boiling water and the sauce of stock. Baste often with melted butter and the drippings. Bake in a hot oven, and when done slide, without breaking, on the hot platter and make a brown sauce with the liquor in the pan, adding sufficient boiling water, 2 tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, and more salt and pepper if necessary.
Red snapper and other medium firm fish may be baked in the same way.
A whole stuffed mackerel roasted with its own pan gravy. The technique is sound; the only real work is sizing the fish and knowing when to stop.
- Fish size and yieldA recipe of this scale suits one mackerel of about 2 to 3 lb, serving three or four. Ask for it scaled and gutted through the belly, which spares you the first two sentences, and keep the head on if you prefer — it holds the shape better in the pan.
- Hot ovenRead "hot oven" as 400-425F. A whole fish of this size needs 30 to 40 minutes; check at 25. It is done when the flesh at the thickest part behind the collar reaches 145F and pulls cleanly from the backbone.
- TeacupfulA teacupful in books of this period is usually reckoned at somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a cup rather than a full measuring cup, though usage varied from book to book. For the crumbs, use soft fresh crumbs rather than dry, or the stuffing sets hard.
- OystersA dozen shucked oysters is about a cup with their liquor. Chop them coarsely and drain most of the liquor off before mixing, or the stuffing will be too wet to hold; save the liquor for the sauce. They cook through in the fish and need no pre-cooking.
- Onion juiceHalf a teaspoon of onion juice is what you get by grating a small onion and pressing the pulp in a sieve. Finely grated onion works as well; a heaped half teaspoon of it is right.
- The pan liquidThe instruction to add "a cupful of boiling water and the sauce of stock" is unclear as printed. A cup of boiling water plus the reserved oyster liquor, or a cup of light fish stock, gives you what the brown sauce needs at the end.
- Closing the fishSew the belly with a trussing needle and cotton twine, or lace it with short skewers. Toothpicks tend to char and drop out. Butter the baking sheet generously and slide a strip of parchment underneath if you want the fish to leave the pan whole.
- The finishing sauceThe pan liquor with catsup and Worcestershire will be thin. Reduce it hard in a saucepan or whisk in a teaspoon of flour cooked in butter; the flour dredged over the fish contributes very little to it.
- Mackerel keeps badlyMackerel is oily and turns quickly. Buy it the day you cook it, look for clear eyes and firm flesh, and do not stuff it in advance — assemble and bake straight away.