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Miroton of Fish and Potato
Marinate one pint of cold cooked fish-salmon, cod, haddock, halibut, etc.-with three or four tablespoonfuls of oil, half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice. Marinate, separately, one pint of cold potatoes, cooked in their skins and cut in cubes, with the same quantity of dressing, adding also one teaspoonful of onion juice. Let stand in a cool
A cold composed salad of flaked cooked fish and potato, each element dressed separately before assembly. The separate marinating is the whole point of the method and should not be shortcut.
- Dress the two elements apartFish and potato absorb oil and acid at very different rates, and mixing them first gives a bowl of dressed potato and bland fish. Marinate each in its own bowl, then combine gently at the end so the fish stays in flakes.
- A pint, by volumeOne pint of flaked cooked fish is somewhere around 12 oz, roughly the yield of a pound of raw fillet. One pint of cubed potato is perhaps 12 oz to a pound of potatoes cooked in their skins. Both are approximations; the original measures by volume.
- Potatoes cooked in their skinsSkin-on boiling keeps the flesh from waterlogging, which matters when it has to take up oil afterward. Use a waxy or all-purpose potato and peel while still warm. Note that the recipe specifies cold potatoes; dressing them while still warm is a departure from what is written.
- Onion juicePeriod cookbooks meant juice pressed from a grated onion through cloth, used for onion flavour without visible pieces. A teaspoon of juice is roughly what half a small onion yields; finely grated onion works if you accept the texture.
- OilThe oil here was olive or a bland salad oil. Three to four tablespoons per pint is a light coat, not a mayonnaise; taste and stop when the fish tastes seasoned rather than slick.
- Standing timeThe text breaks off at 'let stand in a cool' and specifies no duration. Thirty minutes to an hour cold is a reasonable modern guess for both bowls; long soaking in lemon juice will firm and dry delicate flakes of cod or haddock.
- ServingMounded or ringed on a platter rather than tossed. Mayonnaise, chopped parsley, capers or sliced hard-boiled egg are plausible finishes, though the recipe as it survives names none. The quantities would plausibly serve about four as a first course or light lunch.
- KeepingCooked fish held cold and dressed with acid is still cooked fish. Assemble the day you serve it and refrigerate throughout; do not let a dressed fish salad sit out on a buffet.
Miroton in French cookery is attached above all to boeuf miroton, sliced leftover beef in onion sauce; the sense of an arranged, layered or ringed form is an inference, and the word is sometimes said to have been borrowed by American cookbook writers for cold moulded and composed salads of much the same character. That is essentially what this is: a thrift dish that turns yesterday's boiled fish and boiled potatoes into something worth putting on a platter. The technique of marinating each cooked ingredient separately in oil, salt and lemon before combining is often associated with the chafing-dish and salad manuals of the period, which are said to have treated a plain oil-and-acid marinade as the necessary first step and mayonnaise as a finishing garnish rather than a binder.