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Mackerel, Fillets of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.-2 large mackerel, 1 oz. of butter, 1 small bunch of chopped herbs, 3 tablespoonfuls of medium stock, 3 tablespoonfuls of Béchamel; salt, cayenne and lemon-juice to taste. AVERAGE Cost, 1s. 6d.
Clean the fish and fillet it; scald the herbs, chop them fine and put them, with the butter and stock, into a stewpan. Lay in the mackerel and simmer very gently for 10 minutes; take them out and put them on a hot dish. Dredge in a little flour, add the other ingredients, give one boil and pour it over the mackerel.
TIME.-20 minutes.
SEASONABLE from April to July.
Note. Fillets of mackerel may be covered with egg and bread-crumbs and fried of a nice melted butter. brown. Serve with maître d'hôtel sauce or plain
A simple poach-and-pan-sauce treatment for mackerel, written for a kitchen that already had stock and Béchamel standing by. Two adjustments matter: the sauce components need to be ready before the fish goes in, and the fillets need far less than ten minutes.
- TimingMackerel fillets from two large fish are roughly 1/2 in. at the thickest point and are done in 3-4 minutes at a bare simmer. Ten minutes will leave them dry and shredding; take them out as soon as the flesh turns opaque and just parts.
- Medium stockBeeton's "medium stock" is an all-purpose meat broth, lighter than her strong or consommé stocks. A mild chicken or veal stock works; with mackerel a light fish stock is better still, and unsalted so the reduction does not turn briny.
- BechamelThree tablespoons of a made Bechamel. In modern kitchens that means milk thickened with a white roux and infused with onion, bay and peppercorns; Beeton's own version is a richer stock-and-cream white sauce. If you have none, whisk a scant tablespoon of butter-and-flour paste into warm milk. It is there for body, so keep it thick rather than pourable.
- Dredging the flourThe flour goes into the pan liquor after the fish is lifted out, not onto the fillets. Sprinkle it in a little at a time and whisk hard, or scatter it over the butter before adding the stock; a lump-free sauce in one boil depends on it.
- Scalding the herbsThe recipe does not say which herbs; something like parsley with chervil or tarragon and a little thyme suits, dipped briefly in boiling water then chopped. Scalding sets the colour and softens the raw edge, but it is optional with tender soft herbs - add them chopped and raw in the last minute if you prefer.
- Cayenne and lemonBoth go in at the end, off the boil. Mackerel is oily and the acid is structural, not decorative; start with the juice of half a lemon and taste.
- Buying and yieldTwo large mackerel yield four fillets and serve four as a main course with potatoes, or five as a course in a longer meal. "Seasonable from April to July" reflects British inshore fishing; the more useful modern rule is that mackerel spoils faster than almost any fish, so buy it stiff, bright-eyed and the same day you cook it.
- The fried variationThe note is garbled in the original text. It means: egg and breadcrumb the fillets, fry them a nice brown, and serve with maitre d'hotel sauce or plain melted butter. Maitre d'hotel here is butter worked with parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Mackerel occupied an odd place in Victorian Britain: cheap, abundant and so quick to spoil that it was traditionally said to be exempt from the rules against Sunday street-crying in London - a story often repeated, though the detail of the exemption is hazier than the retelling. The season Beeton gives, April to July, is the period when the shoals came inshore and the fish could reach the kitchen fresh. The recipe itself is French technique in an English household book - a shallow poach in butter and stock, the liquor bound with flour and finished with Bechamel - and the presence of ready-made stock and sauce reflects the assumption behind the whole volume, that a cook works from standing preparations rather than starting each dish from nothing. The costing of 1s. 6d. for a dish serving four or five puts it among the more economical fish dishes of the book.