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Finnan-Haddie a la Delmonico
Pick a pound of finnan-haddie into small pieces. Make a sauce by cooking together 2 tablespoonfuls of butter with 2 of flour, until they bubble; then add a pint of rich milk. Add the yolks of 2 eggs, well-beaten, and 3 hard-boiled eggs, cut up fine; 1 tablespoonful of grated Edam cheese, and pepper to taste. Mix the fish with the sauce and heat it all thoroughly together, and serve at once.
A simple creamed smoked-haddock dish that depends almost entirely on temperature control: the sauce carries raw egg yolk and must not be allowed to boil.
- The hinge: never boil after the yolks go inOnce the beaten yolks are stirred into the hot white sauce, keep the pan below a simmer, around 180F, stirring until it thickens. A boil will scramble the yolks and split the sauce into grains.
- Prepare the fish firstFinnan haddie is cold-smoked and raw. Poach the pound in milk or water for 8 to 10 minutes, then drain, skin, bone and flake it before it goes near the sauce. "Heat it all thoroughly together" is not enough cooking on its own, and the original may well assume a fish already softened by soaking or poaching.
- Finnan haddie todayAsk for cold-smoked haddock on the bone, pale gold rather than the bright yellow dyed fillets. If only dyed smoked fillets are available they work, but they are wetter and saltier; taste before seasoning.
- SaltThe recipe calls for pepper only. Smoked haddock brings plenty of salt, and if you poach it in the milk you use for the sauce, more still.
- A pint of rich milkThat is 2 cups of whole milk, or milk with a splash of cream. Two tablespoons each of butter and flour to a pint gives a thin pouring sauce, which is what you want here since the fish and eggs will thicken it further.
- EdamA tablespoon of grated Edam is a seasoning, not a cheese sauce. Edam is mild and slightly salty; a young Gouda is the closest substitute and behaves the same way when melted.
- Yield and servingA pound of fish with a pint of sauce serves four as a lunch or supper dish. Serve on toast points, split baking-powder biscuits, or plain boiled rice, and serve at once as instructed, since the sauce stiffens and dulls on standing.
Finnan haddie is generally said to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, where haddock were split and cold-smoked over peat and wood -- though Findhorn in Moray has also been claimed as the source. The fish reached American cities in quantity by the late nineteenth century and appeared on breakfast and light supper menus. Dishes were freely labelled "a la Delmonico" after the celebrated New York restaurant, whose name lent prestige to any number of recipes it had nothing to do with, and compilations like this one traded in such titles. The formula here is essentially creamed smoked fish with an egg-yolk liaison and a whisper of cheese, the same treatment that in other books turns up as haddock in cream or smoked haddock au gratin.