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Mackerel with Tomatoes
I medium sized mackerel 1 lb. skinned tomatoes 1 wineglassful sherry wine 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) butter 1 slice onion Juice ½ lemon 1/2 pint (I cup) stock 1 teaspoonful powdered herbs 1/2 cupful bread crumbs Salt and pepper 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Cook the mackerel in the oven with the stock, sherry wine, herbs, lemon juice, and onion, cover with a buttered paper; when cooked, remove the skin, split the fish open, and remove the bones; butter a fireproof dish, lay in a layer of sliced tomatoes, a little salt and pepper, then a layer of fish and some tiny pieces of butter, repeat this until the fish is used; finally put a layer of sliced tomatoes on the top; pour over the stock in which the fish was cooked, cover with bread crumbs and some small pieces of butter, and cook in a moderate oven for twenty minutes; sprinkle the parsley over the top and serve at once.
1 quart oysters
A two-stage dish: the mackerel is first braised in a wine-and-stock court bouillon, then layered with tomatoes and baked. The stray "I quart oysters" at the end is the opening line of the next recipe, not an ingredient here.
- The hingeThe first cooking is a gentle braise, not a roast — the fish only needs to set enough that the skin peels and the bones lift out cleanly. The recipe gives no time or temperature for this stage; a moderate oven for roughly twenty minutes suits a whole mackerel. Overcook it here and the second baking will dry it to cotton.
- WineglassfulIn books of this period a wineglass is roughly 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. Some writers stretch it to a third of a cup; either is fine for sherry in a braising liquid.
- Moderate oven350F. The final 20 minutes is really about heating the tomatoes through and browning the crumbs, so the top rack suits it.
- Buttered paperA cartouche — a round of paper laid directly on the fish to trap steam and keep the surface from drying. Parchment does the job; buttering it still helps it lie flat and not stick.
- Skinned tomatoesPeeled, by scoring and dipping in boiling water. Out of season, drained canned whole tomatoes sliced thick are closer to the intended texture than pale fresh ones.
- Powdered herbsDried herbs ground fine. The recipe does not say which; thyme, marjoram, parsley and bay are the usual candidates. A teaspoon of dried thyme and marjoram with a bay leaf in the braising liquid gets you there.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof earthenware or shallow gratin dish. It goes to the table, so choose accordingly.
- Liquid at the endThe full braising liquid poured over will flood the crumbs. Reduce it by half on the stove first, or spoon over only enough to come partway up the layers.
- YieldOne medium mackerel with a pound of tomatoes serves two generously, three as part of a larger meal.
Mackerel is an oily, fast-spoiling fish that was cheap wherever the boats landed, and cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often pair it with something sharp — gooseberry sauce in England, sorrel in France, lemon and tomato here — on the reasoning that acidity cuts the richness. The two-stage method, braising the fish and then rebuilding it in layers with a crumb top, belongs to the same tradition as the fish scallop and the gratin: a way of turning one fish into a dish that can be assembled ahead and carried to the table in its baking vessel. A cook of the period would also have valued the recipe for using the braising liquid rather than discarding it, stock being a thing you made rather than opened.