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Broiled Bloaters
Scrape and clean enough bloaters and wipe dry on a towel; split down the belly from head to tail and lay them flat upon a buttered gridiron, over a clear fire, broiling for about six minutes, turning so as to cook both sides. When they are done, place them on a dish with a little butter over them and serve. Baked Bluefish, Italian Style Score and scale the requisite amount of bluefish and place it in a buttered pan with half a wineglassful of white wine, three tablespoonfuls of mushroom liquor, and a little very finely chopped onion, six chopped mushrooms, and season with salt and pepper; cover the dish with buttered paper and cook in a moderate oven for fifteen minutes, then remove and lay on a dish. Place the liquor in a stewpan, add a gill of Spanish sauce, with one wineglassful of white wine, and reduce for two minutes. Pour the sauce over the fish, with a little finely chopped parsley, and serve, with fancy croutons of bread.
Two short fish recipes run together on the page: split bloaters over the coals, and bluefish baked in wine and mushroom liquor with an espagnole finish. Both assume a cook who already knows the house sauces.
- What a bloater isA whole herring, lightly salted and cold-smoked with the guts left in, which gives it a faintly gamey flavour; the name refers to the swollen appearance of the cured fish, not to its taste. Fishmongers still sell them in Britain; in the US, kippers (split, generally harder-smoked herring) are the nearest practical substitute.
- Gridiron over a clear fireA "clear fire" is coals burned down past the flame stage, no smoke. A ridged grill pan or an outdoor grill at high heat does the same job; oil the bars as well as buttering them, since split herring skin sticks hard.
- Six minutes totalThat is roughly three minutes a side for a split fish laid flat, and it is about right. Bloaters are already smoked and only need heating through and crisping; pushed further, the flesh dries out and the skin scorches from the surface salt.
- Wineglassful and gillA wineglassful in this period is about 2 fl oz, so half a glass is 2 tablespoons. A gill is half a cup, or 4 fl oz.
- Mushroom liquorThe strained soaking or cooking liquid from mushrooms, a standing item in a hotel kitchen. Simmer a handful of sliced mushrooms in a little water for ten minutes and strain, or use the soaking water from dried mushrooms.
- Spanish sauceEspagnole: a brown roux sauce built on veal or beef stock with mirepoix and tomato, one of the mother sauces held ready in a professional kitchen. A well-reduced brown stock or a good demi-glace stands in.
- Buttered paperA cartouche of parchment cut to fit the pan and laid directly on the fish. It traps steam and keeps the surface from drying without sealing the pan the way foil does.
- Moderate oven and timingA moderate oven is usually reckoned at around 350F. Fifteen minutes suits bluefish fillets or a small fish; a whole bluefish of two or three pounds needs closer to 25 to 30 minutes. Current food-safety guidance is 145F at the thickest point, though bluefish dries out past about 135F.
- YieldNeither recipe gives quantities. Figure one bloater per person as a breakfast or savoury course, and 6 to 8 oz of bluefish per person as a main.
Bloaters were a mainstay of the English breakfast and supper table through the nineteenth century, cured in enormous numbers at Great Yarmouth, and their presence in a New York hotel book of 1896 reflects how far the Waldorf's kitchen ran on British and French precedent. Bluefish is an American Atlantic fish, and the "Italian style" here is a standard wine-and-mushroom treatment. Mushroom liquor and Spanish sauce would have been standing preparations in a kitchen of this size, which is what makes a fifteen-minute dish possible.