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Finnan Haddie
I medium sized finnan haddie 2 OZS. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) butter Salt and pepper Select a well-cured medium sized fish. If not well cured it will probably be tasteless and flabby. Wash
A finnan haddie is cold-smoked haddock, cured but not cooked, so it must be heated through before serving. The instruction that matters most is the one the original leads with: the quality of the fish decides the dish, because there is nothing here but haddock, butter and seasoning.
- What to buyFinnan haddie is haddock split, brined and cold-smoked, traditionally over peat, and it is pale straw to deep gold rather than the bright orange of dyed smoked fillets. A whole medium fish runs roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb; two thick smoked haddock fillets are a reasonable substitute.
- The butter measure2 oz is half a stick, or 4 level tablespoons. The original's "2 heaping tablespoonfuls" is the older way of arriving at the same weight.
- Salt with a light handA well-cured haddie carries a good deal of salt already. Season at the end, after tasting, rather than at the start.
- Cook it gently and brieflySmoked haddock is done as soon as it flakes, a matter of minutes in barely simmering liquid. Hard boiling squeezes out moisture and leaves the flesh stringy and oversalted.
- Milk or creamPoaching finnan haddie in milk with the butter is a common period treatment, though this recipe as printed calls only for butter; the milk softens the cure and gives a sauce worth spooning over toast or potatoes. Do not let the milk reach a rolling boil.
- Bones and skinA whole split haddie keeps its backbone and pin bones. Lift the fish out whole, then flake it off the skin and bone before it cools and stiffens.
- YieldOne medium fish with butter and seasoning will stretch to three or four as a breakfast or supper dish with toast and poached eggs, though the original gives no yield.
Finnan haddie is generally said to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, though the name has also been linked to Findhorn on the Moray Firth; both remain traditional etymologies rather than settled fact. Scottish smoked haddock was being sent to Edinburgh and London as a delicacy by the turn of the nineteenth century, and the cure travelled well enough that American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries treated it as a staple breakfast and chafing-dish fish rather than an import. The warning about poorly cured fish is a reminder that smoking quality varied a great deal before refrigeration made a light cure possible; a heavy, well-made haddie was prized precisely because it kept and tasted of something.