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Boiled Mackerel (German Method)
Clean a large fresh mackerel and split it down the back. Put it in a dripping-pan and pour over it a pint of boiling water, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, the sauce of lemon juice, and a teaspoon of salt. Add a medium-sized onion cut in quarters. Boil for three-quarters of an hour. Remove the fish to a hot platter. Strain the liquor in the pan, add a dozen capers, let it boil up, and turn over the fish.
A plain court-bouillon poach of the sort German cooks used for oily river and sea fish, finished with the cooking liquid and capers rather than a butter sauce. One timing in the original needs rethinking before anything else.
- The three-quarters of an hourA split mackerel is done in 8 to 12 minutes in barely simmering liquid, off the flesh at the backbone. Forty-five minutes leaves it dry and shredded, and the skin will slide off in the pan. Judge by the flesh turning opaque and parting cleanly from the bone.
- Boil means simmerWater at a full rolling boil tears delicate fish apart. Bring the liquid up, then hold it just below a simmer with the surface barely trembling.
- Dripping-panThe shallow pan set under a roast to catch fat, closest today to a metal roasting pan or a large deep skillet. It matters only in that the fish should lie flat in a single layer with the liquid nearly covering it.
- The liquorA pint of water plus vinegar and lemon gives a thin, sharp broth. Strain it, then reduce it by half or more before adding the capers so it has some body; whisking in a knob of cold butter at the end thickens it without flour.
- CapersA dozen capers is a modest amount for a whole fish. Rinse brined capers, or rinse and soak salt-packed ones, and add them only at the last moment: prolonged boiling makes them muddy.
- Buying the fishMackerel spoils faster than almost any other fish, and this recipe depends on freshness rather than seasoning to carry it. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean smell; a fish past its best will taste strongly of oil no matter what is poured over it.
- YieldOne large mackerel, about 1 1/2 to 2 lb, serves two generously or three as part of a larger meal. Boiled potatoes or a cucumber salad would sit well alongside, though the recipe itself suggests nothing.
German cookery often treats mackerel and herring as fish to be cut through rather than enriched, which is in keeping with this recipe's reach for vinegar, lemon and capers instead of cream or butter. The acidulated liquid poured over the fish and held just under the boil recalls the method used for trout and carp cooked blau, where acid reacting with the fish's natural coating gives the bluish sheen -- though a mackerel split down the back is not being cooked blue here. American compilations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries collected such dishes under labels like "German Method" or "German Style," reflecting both the large German-speaking population in the United States and the prestige of continental technique in domestic-science writing of the period. Capers, imported pickled from the Mediterranean, appear regularly in these books; they kept well and gave a cheap fish a finished look.