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Fish Left-Overs: Haddie
Broiled Haddie (Scotch recipe).
Put Select a small haddie, as they are more delicate than large ones. the fish in a dripping pan, skin side up, and bring slowly to the boiling point; drain, wipe dry, rub over with soft butter, salt, and lemon juice.
Creamed Haddie (Scotch recipe).
Trim the fins from a thick finnan haddie, cover with cold water, and let stand on the back of a range an hour, simmering slightly at the last. Drain carefully and set into a baking dish; pour over it a cupful milk; cover and set in the oven; cook ten minutes.
Remove the fish to a serving dish and pour over the milk. Garnish with slices of lemon and pickles.
Shredded Haddie.
Braise 2 cupfuls finnan haddie that has been picked fine in a lump of butter the size of a walnut. Add 1 cupful cream into which 1 tablespoonful flour has been rubbed smooth. Let it come to a bol and when cooled a little add 1 large tablespoonful grated cheese, a dash pepper, and, just before serving, the beaten yolk of an egg. Serve on toast.
Finnan Haddie à la Delmonico.
Cut fish in strips (there should be 1 cupful, put in baking pan, cover with cold water, place on back of range, and allow water to heat to Loiling point. Stand on range, keeping water below boiling point for twenty-five minutes, drain, and rinse thoroughly. Separate fish into flakes, add cupful heavy cream and 4 hardboiled eggs thinly sliced. Season with cayenne, add 1 tablespoonful butter, and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.-FANNIE M. FARMER. Baked Salt Herring.
Soak the herrings over night, roll in flour and butter, place in a dripping pan with a very little water over them; season with pepper, and after putting in the oven, baste frequently.
Fried Clams.
A cluster of ways to use up smoked haddock, printed with the typesetting scrambled in places. The instructions assume a coal range with a cool back plate, which is the single thing to translate before anything else.
- The garbled first lineThe broiled haddie recipe has a clause dropped into the middle of the sentence: it should read "Select a small haddie, as they are more delicate than large ones. Put the fish in a dripping pan, skin side up..." Note also that nothing is broiled — the fish is brought slowly to the boiling point (some liquid is implied but none is specified), then dressed with butter, salt and lemon.
- What finnan haddie isCold-smoked, salt-cured haddock, sold whole or in fillets, pale straw to deep gold. It is cured but not cooked, so it always needs heating through. Undyed fillets are worth seeking out; the bright orange kind is usually dyed haddock or pollock.
- Salt levels have droppedModern smoked haddock is cured far more lightly than the 1900s article, which was a preserved food. The hour-long steep in cold water in the creamed version was largely for desalting; twenty to thirty minutes is ample now, and lightly cured fillets need only a rinse.
- "Back of the range"The coolest part of a wood or coal stove top, well below a simmer. On a modern hob, use the lowest setting with the water barely trembling. The Delmonico method — held below boiling for twenty-five minutes — is a poach, and the fish will flake at that point.
- Oven temperatureNone is given for the creamed haddie or the baked herring. A moderate oven, 350F, suits both; ten minutes under a cover is enough to heat the poached fish through in its milk.
- "Braise" and a walnut of butterIn the shredded version braise means to toss over gentle heat in butter, not to stew in liquid. A lump of butter the size of a walnut is usually reckoned at about 1 to 2 tablespoons (½–1 oz).
- The egg yolkAdd it off the heat, and temper it with a spoonful of the hot sauce before it goes in. The recipe adds it "just before serving," after the sauce has "cooled a little" — dropped into a boiling sauce it will scramble and the dish will grain.
- SeasoningDo not salt any of these until the end. Between the cure and the grated cheese in the shredded version, most will need only pepper or cayenne.
- YieldQuantities vary: a cupful for the Delmonico, two cupfuls for the shredded, a whole small haddie for the creamed — roughly two servings each, or four on toast as a savoury or breakfast dish. "Fried Clams" at the foot is a stray heading with no recipe on this page.
History: Finnan haddie is usually said to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, though Findhorn on the Moray Firth has also long been claimed; the derivation is traditional rather than settled. The cure — haddock split, brined and cold-smoked, traditionally over peat or hardwood — travelled with Scottish emigrants and with the North Atlantic fish trade until it was a fixture of American breakfast and supper tables. That is why two of these are labelled "Scotch recipe": the dish was understood as an import, and as a keeping fish that arrived salt-hard and needed reviving in water before it could be eaten. The Delmonico version is credited to Fannie Merritt Farmer, whose Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) did much to standardise American measurement, and the Delmonico name attached to it is the usual late-Victorian shorthand for the New York restaurant's style — rich cream, hard-boiled egg, cayenne — rather than evidence that the kitchen there originated it. The whole section belongs to a period habit these books take for granted: cooked fish and cured fish were never thrown out, but reappeared creamed, shredded on toast, or baked with a little water and frequent basting.