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Potted Fresh Fish
Let the fish lie in salt water for several hours; then for five pounds fish take three ounces salt, two of ground black pepper, two of cinnamon, one of allspice, and a half ounce cloves; cut fish in slices, and place in the jar in which it is to be cooked, first a layer of fish, then the spices, flour and bits of butter sprinkled on, repeating till done. Fill the jar with equal parts vinegar and water, cover closely with a cloth well floured on top so that no steam can escape, and bake six hours. Let it remain in jar until cold, cut in slices, and serve for tea. - Mrs. L. Brown.
This is a soused fish in the old English manner: sliced fish layered with spice, flooded with vinegar and water, and held at a low heat long enough for the small bones to soften. Two things decide whether it works — a genuinely slow oven and a seal that holds.
- The hinge: low heat, sealed vesselSix hours is not a cooking time, it is a softening time. The acid and prolonged gentle heat break down the fine bones so the cold fish can be sliced clean. Anything above a slow oven boils the liquid off, the seal blows, and you get dry, harshly salted fish.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature and does not call for a slow oven; it says only 'bake six hours'. A low modern oven of roughly 275-300F will hold the liquid at a bare tremble for that length of time.
- The jarThis means a lidded stoneware crock or bean pot, not a modern canning jar, which can crack from thermal shock and is not made for oven use. A heavy enameled Dutch oven with its lid on, or a deep covered casserole, is the practical substitute; the floured cloth was doing the job a modern tight lid does.
- The floured clothThe recipe calls for a cloth tied closely over the jar and well floured on top; the flour, dampened by steam, stiffens as the dish bakes and helps close the gap. If you use a lidded pot, a sheet of parchment under the lid is enough; the point is only that steam should not escape.
- Salt and spice, by weightThree ounces of salt for five pounds of fish is about 3.75 percent by weight, on top of a several-hour brine soak — punishing to modern palates. One ounce is closer to current practice, and skip the presoak if you salt in the layers. Two ounces each of black pepper and cinnamon is likewise enormous; a tablespoon or so of each reads as generously spiced today.
- VinegarHousehold vinegar of the period was commonly cider vinegar, though its strength was not standardised the way bottled vinegar is now. Cut it half and half with water as the recipe directs; undiluted vinegar will chalk the fish.
- Which fishOily, firm-fleshed fish take this treatment best — mackerel, herring, bluefish, shad, alewives. Lean white fish falls to shreds over six hours.
- Keeping and servingFive pounds of fish serves eight to ten as a cold dish. It is soused, not canned: nothing here is sterilized or hermetically sealed, so keep it covered in its liquid in the refrigerator and eat within four or five days. "Serve for tea" means the light cold supper, with bread and butter.
Potting and sousing were the standard way to make a glut of fresh fish last a week or two before refrigeration, and the method is old in English cookery — spiced fish baked slowly in vinegar under a sealed crust of flour paste, then eaten cold. Related logic produces soused herring in Britain, escabeche in Spain and Latin America, and rollmops in Germany, though those are cold acid marinades rather than long slow bakes; in the baked versions, acid plus long gentle heat both preserves the flesh and softens the bones. The Dixie Cook Book (1883) collected such recipes under contributors' names, and the instruction to "serve for tea" places this squarely in the late-nineteenth-century household pattern of a cooked midday dinner followed by a cold evening meal drawn from the larder. The heavy hand with cinnamon, cloves and allspice is characteristic of the period, when spice was cheap enough to use freely.