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Broiled Mackerel
Select a medium-sized fresh mackerel, wash, and wipe very dry. Take out the gills and insides. Split it down the back and wipe the inside thoroughly. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and brush it over with a little butter. Put it on the broiler with the inside next to the fire, which must be clear and hot. When nearly done, turn and cook on the outside. It is done when the backbone can be easily removed. Take out the bone, lay the fish on a hot platter with the inside uppermost, and pour over it a tablespoonful of butter, 2 teaspoonfuls of lemon juice, a teaspoonful of minced parsley, salt, and pepper, and set it in the oven for a few minutes until the butter and lemon juice are absorbed.
A gridiron recipe from the coal-range era, written for a fire you could see. It translates cleanly to an overhead broiler provided you respect the two things the original insists on: a very dry fish and a very hot heat source.
- The hinge: dry fish, hot broilerMackerel is wet and oily, and a lukewarm broiler steams it into grey mush. Blot the split fish inside and out, then preheat the broiler element for a good ten minutes with the rack set about 4 inches beneath it.
- "The broiler" is not your oven drawerIn the range era this meant a hinged wire gridiron held over clear coals, so the cut side genuinely faced the fire first. Under a modern overhead element, lay the fish cut side up on a foil-lined pan or preheated rack and cook it that way for most of the time.
- TurningWhole split mackerel is fragile once hot. Give the cut side roughly 4 to 6 minutes, then turn skin side up for 2 to 3 minutes to blister and crisp it. Some cooks skip the turn entirely and simply finish skin side up under the element, though the original directs a turn.
- DonenessThe backbone test still works and is a good one, but check with a thermometer if you prefer: it should flake without resistance at the shoulder. Note that food-safety guidance gives 145F for fish, though many cooks pull oily fish nearer 135-140F.
- Butter for brushingWhole butter burns under a hot element and the milk solids will speck the fish. Clarified butter or a neutral oil for the brushing stage, with whole butter reserved for the finish, gives a cleaner result.
- The finishing sauceButter, lemon, parsley, salt and pepper is maitre d'hotel butter in loose form. Work it into a paste beforehand and drop it on the hot fish rather than pouring it, and skip the return to the oven altogether -- a minute of standing is enough.
- BuyingMackerel spoils faster than almost any other fish. Look for firm flesh, clear rather than sunken eyes, and no ammonia smell, and cook it the day you buy it. Fillets work if a whole fish is not available; reduce the time to 4 or 5 minutes total.
- YieldA medium mackerel of 1 to 1 1/2 lb serves two, or one generously as a main course with boiled potatoes.