Boned Herrings
Select fish with roes. Split, wash, scrape and remove heads and roes and also the backbone. Sprinkle generously with pepper, salt and finely minced parsley; then roll each piece tightly, beginning with the head, and tie with a string. Put into boiling water that is seasoned with pepper, salt and vinegar and simmer ten or fifteen minutes. Cut the roes in pieces and fry. Place the fish and roes on buttered toast, garnish with cress and ' serve.
B
A plain court-bouillon poach of rolled herring fillets, served with their own fried roes on toast. Two things need attention: the fish is thinner than the instruction assumes, and the roes want a different treatment from the fish.
- TimingTen to fifteen minutes is long for a rolled herring fillet. A roll made from a split herring is barely half an inch through; five to eight minutes at a bare simmer is generally enough, and it is done when the flesh is opaque to the centre. Keep the water trembling rather than bubbling or the rolls unwind and break up.
- Splitting and boningSplit along the belly, open the fish flat, then lift the backbone out from the head end with the tip of a knife; the fine pin bones can be left, being small and soft. A fishmonger will butterfly herring on request, but ask for the roes to be kept.
- RoesHerring carry either hard roe (eggs) or soft roe (milt, from the males). Both fry well, but soft roe is fragile and needs only a minute or two per side in butter after a light dusting of seasoned flour. Hard roe is denser and takes three or four minutes. Do not fry them until the fish is nearly poached.
- TyingCotton butcher's twine, or a wooden cocktail stick pushed through the roll. Nothing synthetic, and remove the string before the fish goes on the toast.
- The poaching liquidThe recipe gives no proportions: about 2 tablespoons of vinegar to a quart of water, well salted, is a reasonable balance. Cider or white wine vinegar suits herring better than malt.
- CressWatercress is most likely what is meant, though garden cress was also used as a garnish. Its pepperiness works against an oily fish.
- YieldOne herring per person as a first course, two for a supper dish, each on its own slice of buttered toast. Serve immediately: poached herring on toast goes soft and cool very fast.
Herring was the cheapest sea fish in the English-speaking kitchen for centuries, landed in enormous quantities and eaten fresh near the coast, salted or smoked everywhere else. A recipe like this one belongs to the fresh-herring season, and its economy is characteristic of the period: nothing is discarded but head and backbone, and the roes, which a modern fishmonger often throws away, are treated as a second dish in their own right. The Butterick Publishing Company was a pattern and magazine house, and its cook book of 1911 was aimed at the same middle-class housekeeper who bought its dress patterns. The stray "B" at the end of the text cannot be identified with any confidence.