No. 1194

Fresh Mackerel, with White Piquante Sauce

Maquereau Frais a la Sauce Piquante Blanche

Suppress the heads and the thin tail parts of four fresh, well cleansed mackerel; remove the skins and pare the meat into half hearts, lay these on a dish, season with salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf, cut up onions, oil and lemon juice, turning them over at intervals. One hour later take the pieces from their pickle, dip them in flour and cook in clarified butter; when done and of a fine color, drain and dress them either in a straight row or in a circle on a dish and pour around a white sharp (piquante) sauce (No. 538).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a short oil-and-lemon marinade followed by a flour dredge and a fry in clarified butter. Everything hinges on the fish being genuinely fresh and the pieces being thin enough to cook through in the pan.

Buy the fish the day you cook itMackerel is very oily and turns rancid and soft faster than almost any other market fish. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and no sour smell; if it smells strongly fishy at the counter, the marinade will not rescue it.
"Half hearts"Ranhofer does not describe the cut beyond the name. The usual reading is to fillet and skin each mackerel and cut the flesh into pieces shaped like half a heart — one curved edge, one straight. The recipe gives no yield or number of servings.
"Pickle" means marinadeThe salt, pepper, thyme, bay, onion, oil and lemon juice here are a seasoning marinade, not a preserving brine. Keep it in the refrigerator for the hour rather than on the counter, and pat the pieces dry before flouring or the coating will slide off.
Clarified butter, and whyButter with the milk solids removed takes frying heat without scorching. Use it at a steady medium-high; whole butter will blacken before the flour crust colors.
Pan timeThe recipe gives no timing; it says only to cook until done and of a fine color. Thin skinned pieces will take only a few minutes a side. The flesh should just lose its translucence at the center; pushed further it goes dry and grainy.
Sauce No. 538The white piquante is a separate numbered recipe in the book; you will need to turn to it. Make it before you fry, since the fish will not wait, and pour it around the fish rather than over the crust, as the recipe directs.
Dressing the dishThe recipe specifies a straight row or a circle with the sauce poured around rather than over. One practical effect is that the fried pieces stay out of the sauce and the flour coating stays crisp to the table.

A Little History

This is one of a run of mackerel recipes in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the encyclopedic record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Mackerel arrived in East Coast markets in enormous quantities in the nineteenth century and was cheap, which is part of why so much of it was salted; a fresh mackerel treated in the French manner, filleted, skinned, cut into neat shapes and sauced, was a way of raising a workaday fish to restaurant standing. The oily flesh takes well to acid, and the pairing of fried mackerel with something sharp — vinegar, mustard, gooseberry, or here a sauce piquante in its white form — is long established in European cooking. Ranhofer's habit of cross-referencing to a numbered sauce, rather than repeating it, reflects the professional kitchen he wrote from, where the sauces were standing preparations and only the garnish and the fish changed.