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Fried Smoked Haddock
Soak a haddock in olive oil for a number of hours, then put it in a fryingpan with oil and fry until it is done. Pepper well and serve at once.
Three sentences of instruction that assume a cook who already knows what smoked haddock is and how salty it can be. The gaps are worth filling in before the pan goes on.
- What fish this isSmoked haddock in 1896 usually meant something on the lines of finnan haddie: a split haddock, cold-smoked, firm and salty, and raw in the sense that it still needs cooking. Buy undyed if you can; the bright yellow fillets are dyed and tend to be more lightly cured.
- The oil soak is the hingeCold-smoked haddock is dry and salty, and a soak in oil seasons it and should help keep the flesh from drying out in the pan. Two to four hours in a shallow dish of olive oil is generally enough for fillets; "a number of hours" suits a thick split fish. If your haddock is heavily salted, a preliminary hour in cold water or milk, patted dry, will pull the salt back before the oil goes on.
- Add no saltThe recipe calls for pepper only. Cured haddock carries most of the salt the dish needs; taste before you reach for the cellar.
- Pan and heatA medium-hot pan, film of oil, skin side down first. The fish is already smoked and part-dried, so it wants three to four minutes a side for a half-inch fillet, longer for a thick split fish.
- "Until it is done"Done here means the flesh has turned opaque and separates into large flakes at the thickest point, around 145F. Smoked haddock goes stringy and dry quickly past that, so pull it early rather than late.
- Quantity and servingFigure 6 to 8 oz per person. This is breakfast or supper food: serve with brown bread and butter, a poached egg, or lemon. "Serve at once" matters, as it stiffens as it cools.
- If you cannot find finnan haddieAny cold-smoked white fish behaves the same way in this recipe. Hot-smoked fish, which is already cooked through, will fall apart in the pan and should not be substituted.
Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, and the 1896 Cook Book he put his name to is essentially a working reference for a large hotel kitchen, which is why entries like this one run to three lines: the cooks already knew the dish. Smoked haddock reached New York hotel breakfast tables as finnan haddie, a name generally traced to the fishing village of Findon, near Aberdeen, where split haddock were cured over smoke. Oscar's version is the plainer treatment, using olive oil where a Scottish kitchen would have used butter and milk. That the fish arrived salted and smoked at all is a reminder of how much of the period's hotel larder was preserved rather than fresh.