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Broiled Swordfish
Clean and broil fish, spread with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve with Cucumber Sauce I, or Horseradish Sauce I.
Two lines of instruction assume a cook who already knows how to manage a broiler; the whole dish turns on how the fish is cut and how briefly it cooks.
- The hinge: thickness, not timeSwordfish is lean and firm and goes dry and cottony the moment it is overdone. Cut steaks a full inch thick and pull them at 130-135F in the center, when the flesh is just barely opaque and still juicy at the bone line.
- What "broil" meant hereIn 1896 this was a greased double wire broiler held over live coals, or later the flame of a gas range, with the fish turned once. Under a modern overhead broiler, set the rack 4 inches from the element, preheat it fully, and give a 1-inch steak roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side.
- Oil the fish, not just the panThe recipe adds butter only after cooking, which works over coals in a wire broiler but not on a hot modern pan or grate. Brush the steaks lightly with oil before they go under the heat, then finish with butter as directed.
- Season before, and afterSalt and pepper applied at the end sit on the surface. Season the steaks 10 to 15 minutes ahead as well; the flesh is dense enough that surface salt alone does not carry.
- Cucumber Sauce I and Horseradish Sauce IBoth are cold sauces given elsewhere in the book; look them up in the sauce chapter for exact proportions. Either can be made an hour ahead and kept cold.
- MercurySwordfish is a long-lived predator and carries among the highest methylmercury levels of commonly sold fish. Current advice in the US and UK is that pregnant people and young children avoid it, and that other adults eat it infrequently.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Figure 6 to 8 ounces of steak per person as a main course.
Swordfish appears in the Boston Cooking-School book as a straightforwardly local fish. Through the nineteenth century the New England swordfish fishery worked the waters off Block Island, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, taking fish by harpoon from the bow pulpit of a schooner, and Boston and New York markets sold the steaks through the summer months. A fish of that bulk reached market as thick cross-cut steaks rather than fillets, and cookbooks of the period treat it almost like beef: broiled over coals, buttered, and served with a sharp cold sauce. The pairing with grated horseradish or cucumber in cream may recall the way English and American cooks treated salmon and mackerel, cutting a rich, meaty fish with something acidic and raw.