Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Salt Mackerel
Salt Mackerel
Mrs. F. D. J.
Soak the fish for a few hours in lukewarm water, changing the water several times; then put into cold water loosely tied in cloths, and let the fish come to a boil, turning off the water once, and pouring over the fish hot water from the tea kettle; let this just come to a boil, then take them out and drain them, lay them on a platter, butter and pepper them, and place them for a few moments in the oven. Serve with sliced lemons, or with any nice fish sauce.
A method rather than a formula: the whole point of the recipe is drawing salt out of a hard-cured fish without cooking it to shreds. Two details carry the dish — how long you soak, and how gently you heat.
- The fish itselfNineteenth-century salt mackerel was split and heavily salted, usually barrel-packed, and kept for months. What is sold today as "salt mackerel" is often a lighter cure that needs far less soaking; taste a corner of the raw flesh after an hour or two and stop when it is pleasantly salty rather than harsh. A hard-cured fish may need overnight.
- Soak cold, not lukewarmLukewarm water draws salt out faster, which may be why it is specified, but a few hours at room temperature on a partly desalted fish is more than the flesh needs. Soak in cold water in the refrigerator, skin side up so the salt sinks away from the fish, and change the water three or four times.
- "Let the fish come to a boil"Read this as bring barely to a simmer and pull it off. Mackerel is soft and oily; a rolling boil breaks the fillets apart and toughens what is left. The water should shiver, not bubble.
- The clothsLoosely wrapping in cheesecloth or a clean cotton napkin is how a cook lifted a whole split fish out of the pot intact. A wide skimmer or a folded strip of parchment under the fish does the same job.
- Turning off the waterThe first water is discarded because it comes out salty; the kettle water finishes the cooking in clean liquid. Nothing mysterious here, and it is worth doing if your fish is on the salty side of right.
- The oven finish"A few moments" means a hot oven, or better a broiler, just long enough to melt the butter and glaze the surface — two or three minutes. The recipe gives no temperature. Any longer and you dry out fish you have just carefully poached.
- Yield and servingA split salt mackerel will serve about two. Salt mackerel was typically breakfast or supper fare in this period: lemon, plenty of black pepper, boiled potatoes alongside.
Salt mackerel was one of the cheap staple proteins of the North Atlantic world, and the New England and Maritime fisheries salted it by the barrel through the nineteenth century, when a household could buy a single split fish from a grocer's cask. It appears in books like The Home Cook Book — a Toronto community cookbook compiled from contributed recipes, each signed with the donor's name, as here with Mrs. F. D. J. — because boiled salt mackerel with butter and lemon was standard breakfast fare, closer in status to porridge than to a company dish. The two-water technique it describes is the general handling for all hard-cured fish of the era, salt cod included: a long soak to draw the brine, then a gentle poach in fresh water so the fish is seasoned from within rather than salted on the surface.