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Finnan Haddie à la Delmonico
Cut fish in strips (there should be one cup), put in bakingpan, cover with cold water, place on back of range and allow water to heat to boiling-point; let stand on range, keeping water below boiling-point for twenty-five minutes, drain, and rinse thoroughly. Separate fish into flakes, add one-half cup heavy cream and four "hard-boiled" eggs thinly sliced. Season with cayenne, add one tablespoon butter, and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.
A creamed smoked haddock dish that leans entirely on one step: the soak that pulls the salt and smoke down to an edible level. Everything after that is assembly.
- What finnan haddie isCold-smoked, lightly salted haddock, the name usually traced to Findon in Aberdeenshire (though Findhorn is sometimes claimed instead). Modern smoked haddock is generally milder and wetter than the harder cures of 1900, so taste a flake after soaking before deciding it needs more.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe fish goes into cold water, is brought slowly up to boiling-point, then held below boiling for twenty-five minutes. Keep the surface barely shivering rather than bubbling. A rolling boil toughens the flesh into strings and drives the flakes apart before you want them separated.
- "Back of the range"On a wood or coal range this was the cool corner of the top. On a modern hob it is the lowest setting, or a covered pan in a 200F oven, checked so the surface only shivers.
- QuantityOne cup of fish strips is somewhere around 5 to 8 oz of raw fillet depending how tightly it is packed. Cut across the fillet in finger-width strips before soaking; they flake more evenly than a whole piece.
- Rinse thoroughly means itAfter draining, rinse under cold running water and pat dry. Skipping this leaves a briny film that the cream will not disguise.
- Cream and eggsHalf a cup of heavy cream (36 percent or more) will thicken slightly against the warm fish without splitting; light cream or half-and-half tends to break. Slice the eggs thin and fold them in at the last moment so they stay in rounds.
- No oven step is givenThe recipe stops at seasoning. If you want it hot through, warm the assembled dish gently in the pan, just until the cream is heated. Longer curdles the cream and rubbers the fish.
- Seasoning and servingCayenne only; the fish carries the salt. The quantities suggest two or three portions as a lunch or supper dish; it is commonly served over buttered toast.
Finnan haddie reached American tables through the smoked-fish trade, the name generally traced to the fishing village of Findon, south of Aberdeen, where haddock was split and cold-smoked. By the later nineteenth century it was familiar on New England breakfast and supper tables, much of it cured in American smokehouses around Boston and Portland as well as imported. The "a la Delmonico" tag attaches the dish to the famous New York restaurant, whose name was attached freely by cookbook writers of the period; no house recipe is cited here.