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Broiled Mackerel
Wash and wipe fish; grease a wire broiler with clarified butter, lard, or pork fat. Season fish with salt and pepper, place on greased broiler and broil over clear fire, turning every five seconds. If the fish is a thick one, hold at quite a distance from fire until fish is cooked through, then hold nearer embers to brown. Separate first, skin side, then flesh side, with sharp knife from the broiler. Remove to hot platter, garnish, and serve.
This is a coal-fire method written for a hinged wire broiler, a tool that has quietly returned as the fish basket sold for outdoor grills. Translating it is mostly a matter of understanding what the fire was doing.
- The wire broilerA hinged double grid that clamps the fish between two wire faces so it can be flipped as a unit. A modern fish basket does the same job; the greasing step is the whole point, since mackerel skin welds itself to hot wire.
- A clear fireHardwood or charcoal burned down to glowing embers with no flame and no smoke. Under a gas or electric broiler element, preheat fully and work about 4 inches away, moving the pan lower for a thick fish.
- Turning every five secondsLikely shorthand for constant, restless turning over a fierce bare fire so neither face sits long enough to scorch, though the book states it flatly. Under an overhead broiler you need not turn at all: split mackerel goes skin side down, flesh up, and cooks through in one position.
- Times the original omitsA split mackerel of 1 to 1.5 lb takes roughly 6 to 10 minutes total. Fish is done when the flesh at the backbone turns from translucent to opaque and flakes; 145F at the thickest point if you prefer a thermometer.
- Fat and flare-upsMackerel is among the oiliest common fish, and the dripping fat will flare over live coals. Keep the far side of the grill free of fuel so you can move the broiler off the flames rather than dousing them.
- Clarified butter, lard, or pork fatAll three stand up to broiling heat without burning. Clarified butter or ghee still works; plain butter will burn and blacken the wires at broiling heat.
- Freeing the fishThe instruction to separate skin side first, then flesh side, with a sharp knife is the step that saves the dish. Slide a thin blade flat between wire and fish on each face, or the fillet tears in half.
- Garnish and yieldLemon wedges, parsley, and a pat of maitre d'hotel butter would all be period-appropriate, though the recipe specifies nothing. One split mackerel of a pound or so serves one generously, two modestly.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer, which explains the book's unusual weight of cocoa and candy recipes alongside plain New England cookery like this. Mackerel was one of the cheapest and most abundant fish on the North Atlantic coast, and salt mackerel in barrels was common breakfast fare; fresh mackerel spoils notoriously fast. Broiling over clear embers in a hinged wire broiler was a standard treatment for a fish oily enough to baste itself, and the technique long predates the enclosed gas broiler.