Baked Herring
Soak salt herring over night, roll in flour and butter, and place in a dripping-pan with a very little water over them; season with pepper.-Mrs. E. J. Starr.
A four-line recipe that assumes you know what salt herring is and what a dripping-pan does. The soak is the whole dish: get it wrong and the fish is inedible.
- Soak, then tasteOvernight in cold water is a starting point, not a rule — hard-cured herring may need 12 to 24 hours with two or three changes of water, kept in the refrigerator. Break off a corner and taste the raw flesh before cooking; it should read as seasoned, not briny.
- Salt herring todayWhole salt herring in barrels or buckets is still sold in Northern and Eastern European groceries, often as schmaltz herring or matjes fillets. Fillets soak faster than whole fish; if you buy them already in oil or vinegar, this recipe is not the right use for them.
- "Roll in flour and butter"Meaning: dredge the drained, dried fish in flour and dot or brush it generously with softened butter. Pat the fish thoroughly dry first or the flour turns to paste.
- Dripping-panA shallow rectangular roasting pan. Any low-sided sheet pan or oven dish works; the fish should lie in one layer with room around it so the water steams off rather than poaching the fish.
- Oven temperatureNone is given; the book was written for a range fire rather than a dialled oven. A modern oven at 375-400F suits. Herring is thin and will cook in roughly 20 to 25 minutes, until the flesh flakes and the flour coat has coloured.
- SeasoningPepper only, and the author means it — even after a long soak the fish carries plenty of salt. Season anything served alongside lightly.
- Yield and servingFigure one whole herring per person, or two fillets. Salt herring of this kind was commonly a breakfast or supper dish: boiled or fried potatoes, brown bread, and something sharp such as pickled onion or vinegar to cut the oil.
Salt herring was one of the great cheap proteins of the nineteenth-century pantry, shipped in barrels from the North Atlantic fisheries and keeping for months without ice, which is why it turns up in a Southern compilation far from any herring ground. The Dixie Cook-Book credits contributors by name -- Mrs. E. J. Starr's entry is a household note rather than a developed recipe, needing only the reminder about the flour, the butter and the little water. The Chesapeake and the rivers of Virginia and North Carolina did support their own spring herring runs, salted down by the barrel on the farm, so a reader might have been working with local fish rather than imported; either way the treatment was the same.