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Broiled Salt Mackerel
Soak overnight in buttermilk. Lay flesh side down in shallow pan, cover with hot milk, let stand a few minutes, wipe dry, and broil.
When served, the breakfaster picks tidbits of flesh from the bones, mixes them lightly into a big helping of mashed potatoes, and sluices everything with milk gravy, making a dish worthy to compete with almost any at the seashore. 2 CUPS MASHED POTATOES
A salt-cured mackerel breakfast, once standard along the New England coast. Everything depends on the soak: undersoaked salt fish is inedible, and the recipe gives no quantity of buttermilk or fish, so judge by taste.
- The hinge is the soakSalt mackerel comes from the barrel or the vacuum pack carrying far more salt than modern palates accept. Soak it fully submerged, refrigerated, overnight, and taste a shaving of the raw flesh before cooking; if it is still sharply salty, change the liquid and give it several more hours.
- Buttermilk versus waterWater draws salt out faster, but a buttermilk soak softens the cure and is widely held to take the edge off the oily, fishy note. Cultured buttermilk from a carton is thicker and more acidic than old churn buttermilk, though for a soak of this kind it will serve.
- The hot-milk stepScald the milk, pour it over the fish flesh-side down, and leave it five minutes or so. It is a final sweetening and firming step, not cooking. Discard the milk and wipe the fish genuinely dry or it will steam rather than brown.
- How to broil itSkin side down first on a greased rack or foil-lined sheet, about 4 inches under a preheated broiler, 4 to 6 minutes, then turn if the fillet is thick. Salt mackerel is fatty and will flare; watch it rather than timing it. Brush with butter but add no salt.
- Buying the fishAsk for salt mackerel, which is split and dry- or brine-cured, not smoked mackerel and not the fresh fillet. Portuguese, Italian and Caribbean groceries are often the likeliest sources now; a whole split fish is generally somewhere around half a pound to a pound, enough for one hearty breakfast eater or two ordinary ones.
- Milk gravyThe recipe assumes you know it: a tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked together, then a cup of milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Pepper generously and hold back on the salt until the fish is on the plate.
- ServingTwo cups of mashed potatoes is roughly two servings. Bring the fish to the table on the bone so the flakes can be picked off and folded into the potato, which is the whole point of the dish.
Salt mackerel was a common breakfast dish in coastal New England and the Maritimes well into the twentieth century, when barrelled fish was cheap winter protein and the mackerel fishery landed far more than could be eaten fresh. Salting was the practical way to hold an oily fish through the cold months, and soaking in water, milk or buttermilk was one common household correction for a cure pitched for keeping rather than eating. The pairing with mashed potato and milk gravy belongs to the same frugal tradition as salt cod with cream and pork scraps: a strong, salty protein stretched across a bland, filling starch. Salt fish also travelled without ice and kept well, which suits a book of outdoor cookery.