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Cold Mackerel, Vinaigrette
1 teaspoonful chopped parsley I mackerel 12 tablespoonfuls olive oil 1 bunch parsley 1 slice lemon 1 teaspoonful chopped shallots 6 tablespoonfuls tarragon 1 teaspoonful chopped parsvinegar ley 2 teaspoonfuls made mus- 1 tablespoonful chopped ghertard kins and capers 1 teaspoonful salt Clean the mackerel, leaving the head on, wrap it in a piece of cheesecloth, and boil in boiling salted water until tender.
The ingredient column has come through the scanner badly jumbled, with the vinaigrette items interleaved and doubled; read it as one whole mackerel cooked in salted water, then dressed with a sharp herb vinaigrette and served cold. Reconstructed sensibly it is roughly 12 tablespoons olive oil to 6 of tarragon vinegar, 2 teaspoons made mustard, a teaspoon of salt, chopped shallot, parsley, and a tablespoon of chopped gherkins and capers.
- The instruction that mattersDo not actually boil the fish. Bring the salted water to a boil, slide the wrapped mackerel in, then drop the heat so the water barely shivers. A rolling boil splits the skin and shreds the flesh, and the whole point of the cheesecloth wrap is to lift the fish out in one piece.
- TimingA mackerel of about 1 to 1.5 lb needs roughly 8-12 minutes at a bare simmer. It is done when the flesh at the thickest part of the back parts from the bone; "until tender" in a book of this period often meant longer than anyone would cook fish now.
- Made mustardThis means prepared mustard, as opposed to dry mustard powder. A smooth Dijon suits a French-style vinaigrette, though an English made mustard is equally likely to be what was meant.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, but easy to make: warm white wine vinegar poured over a few tarragon sprigs and left a week. If you substitute plain white wine vinegar the dressing loses the anise note that carries the oily fish.
- Proportions of the dressingTwo parts oil to one part vinegar is sharper than the modern three-to-one default, and deliberately so with a rich fish. Whisk the mustard and salt into the vinegar first, then the oil, and stir the shallot, parsley, gherkins and capers in at the end.
- CheeseclothCut a piece long enough to leave tails at both ends and use them as handles. If your cheesecloth is loosely woven, two layers is safer.
- Serving and yieldOne mackerel serves two as a main course or four as a first course. Cool the fish completely, skin it if you like, spoon the vinaigrette over shortly before serving, and add the lemon slice and parsley at the table so they stay fresh.
- BuyingMackerel spoils faster than almost any other fish. Buy it stiff, bright-eyed and smelling of the sea, and cook it the day you get it.
Cold poached fish under a mustard-sharpened vinaigrette is a French service dish that English and American cookery took up wholesale in the late nineteenth century, and this book gives it in an unmistakably French register: tarragon vinegar, shallots, capers and gherkins, the classic sauce vinaigrette of Escoffier's period rather than an English salad dressing. Mackerel suited the treatment for practical reasons as much as culinary ones. It was cheap, abundant and so perishable that it was said to be the one fish licensed to be cried in the streets on a Sunday in some British towns, a claim hard to document, and its oily flesh takes an acid dressing better than any lean white fish. Leaving the head on, as the recipe insists, was standard for a fish meant to be brought whole to the table on a long dish, and the cheesecloth wrap is the domestic substitute for the professional kitchen's fish kettle with its perforated lifting plate.