Finnan Haddie
Braise two cups of finnan haddie that has been picked up fine in a lump of butter the size of a walnut, over the open fire. Add one cup of cream into which one tablespoon of flour has been rubbed smooth. Let come to a boil, and when cooled a little, add one large tablespoon of grated cheese, a trifle of pepper and, just before serving, the well beaten yolk of an egg. Serve on toast.-Mrs Edward Cahill.
A late-Victorian chafing-dish supper: smoked haddock creamed and enriched with cheese and egg yolk. The whole thing takes under fifteen minutes, and the only real difficulty is keeping the sauce from breaking.
- The hinge: the yolk must not boilTake the pan off the heat, stir a spoonful of the hot sauce into the beaten yolk, then stir that back in. If the mixture returns to a simmer after the yolk goes in, it will curdle into threads.
- Finnan haddieCold-smoked haddock, salty and firm, sold whole or in fillets at good fish counters and by mail. If it tastes very salty raw, poach it briefly in milk or water first, then drain and flake; substitute any cold-smoked white fish, not hot-smoked, which is already cooked through and flakes to mush.
- "Picked up fine"Flaked small with the fingers, bones and skin removed. Two cups is roughly 10 to 12 oz of boneless smoked fish.
- A lump of butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 to 1½ tablespoons. Shelled walnut, not the whole nut in shell.
- "Braise" and "over the open fire"Here braise simply means to warm gently in the butter, not to stew in liquid. The open fire means direct heat rather than a double boiler; medium-low on a burner is the equivalent, and low heat is worth keeping throughout.
- Flour rubbed into the creamWhisk the tablespoon of flour into a little of the cold cream to a smooth slurry, then add the rest. Added dry to hot cream it will lump.
- The cheeseProbably a dry grating cheese: aged cheddar, Parmesan or a hard American cheese. One large tablespoon is only about ¼ oz, enough to season rather than to make a cheese sauce.
- Yield and servingServes two generously, three at a lunch. Spoon over thick buttered toast; the sauce is thin by design and will soak in.
Finnan haddie is generally said to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, whose haddock were split, brined and cold-smoked; the derivation is traditional rather than settled, and Findhorn on the Moray Firth has also been claimed. By the 1880s and 1890s the cured fish was shipped to the United States and also smoked domestically in New England, which is why it turns up so often in turn-of-the-century American fish chapters. This particular treatment — flaked fish, cream, a little cheese and a yolk to finish, served on toast — is of a piece with chafing-dish cookery, the fashionable late-Victorian mode for suppers cooked at the table over a spirit lamp, and the instruction to work "over the open fire" and add the yolk "just before serving" is consistent with that. Recipes contributed under a subscriber's married name, as here, were common in late-nineteenth-century American collections.