No. 1195

Mackerel, Cream Horseradish Sauce—Salt and Smoked

Maquereau Sale et Fume Sauce a la Creme au Raifort

Soak salt mackerel for twelve hours, changing the water several times; cook the fish in an abundance of water into which has been added a dash of vinegar, thyme, bay leaf, branches of parsley, and sliced onions; remove the saucepan at the first boil, and leave the fish in the water without allowing it to boil any more for fifteen minutes; drain, dress the mackerel on a folded napkin, and surround with parsley leaves. Serve at the same time a sauce-boat of cream sauce (No. 454), into which has been incorporated half its quantity of grated horseradish heated in the sauce without boiling.

For Smoked Mackerel.—Instead of boiling the fish, broil it over a slow fire, and serve it on a horseradish sauce with cream (No. 478).

← No. 1194 Fresh Mackerel, with White Piquante Sauce Shad, Herring & Mackerel No. 1196 Spanish Mackerel a la Perigord →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations of cured mackerel, both leaning on a horseradish cream to cut the oil. The technique is straightforward; the only real difficulties are sourcing the fish and resisting the urge to boil anything.

The hinge: never boil after the first bubbleSalt mackerel is a fat, soft-fleshed fish that shreds if kept at a rolling boil. Bring the court-bouillon just to the boil, pull the pan off the heat, and hold the fish in the hot water for 15 minutes — the residual heat is enough to cook it through.
Don't boil the horseradish eitherGrated horseradish loses its pungency within a minute or two of heating, and boiling flattens it entirely. Warm it into the cream sauce off direct heat and serve at once.
Soaking the salt fishTwelve hours with several water changes is right for a traditional hard-salted split mackerel. Modern lightly cured or brine-packed fillets need far less — taste a corner of the raw flesh after an hour or two and stop when it reads seasoned rather than briny.
Sauce No. 454Ranhofer's cream sauce is a rich white sauce finished with cream rather than a plain cream reduction; any well-seasoned medium-thick white sauce enriched with cream stands in. No. 478, called for in the smoked version, is described here as a horseradish sauce with cream, so the first instruction — horseradish grated into the cream sauce — effectively gives you both.
"An abundance of water"Enough to cover the fish by an inch or two in a wide pan, plus a splash of vinegar, a sprig of thyme, a bay leaf, parsley stems and a sliced onion. Do not salt the liquid.
Broiling the smoked fish"A slow fire" means moderate, distant heat. Hot-smoked mackerel is already cooked and needs only warming through and light colouring, three to four minutes a side; cold-smoked fish is raw and must be broiled until cooked through. High heat renders the oil out and scorches the skin.
The folded napkinNineteenth-century service dressed poached fish on a folded linen napkin set on the platter to absorb draining liquid. It works, and it keeps the sauce from being thinned at the table.
YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a mackerel of about a pound will serve two as a first course. The recipe's own ratio for the sauce is horseradish equal to half the volume of the cream sauce, i.e. about a third of the finished mixture.

A Little History

Salt and smoked mackerel were staples of the Atlantic fisheries long before Charles Ranhofer put them on Delmonico's carte: the fish spoils notoriously fast, is very oily, and so was landed, split, and salted or smoked in large quantities through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Serving it against horseradish follows the northern European logic that fat, cured fish wants a sharp root — the same reasoning that pairs horseradish cream with smoked eel or with boiled beef. Ranhofer sets these cured preparations alongside the fresh in a chapter headed Shad, Herring & Mackerel: a New York kitchen of the 1890s handled cured and fresh as two branches of one subject, and salt mackerel was familiar enough on American tables that the grand restaurant kept a dressed-up version on hand. The cream sauce and the folded napkin are the French finish laid over what was, in many American houses, plain preserved-fish cookery.