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Boiled Findon Haddock
Procure two pounds thick Findon haddock; remove all the bones and skin and boil in a saucepan with two quarts water for ten minutes. Remove from the water, drain well, dress on a hot dish with a napkin, decorate the dish with six pieces lemon and parsley greens, and serve with a little hot, melted butter, separately.
A Victorian-Edwardian way of serving smoked haddock: barely cooked in water, drained hard, and sent out with melted butter alongside. Two adjustments carry the dish.
- Findon haddock is finnan haddie"Findon" (pronounced and usually spelled Finnan) is cold-smoked haddock from Findon in Aberdeenshire. Look for undyed smoked haddock; the bright yellow dyed fillets are a later commercial product.
- Poach, do not boilA rolling boil shreds smoked haddock and squeezes it dry. Bring the water to the point of trembling, slide the fish in, and hold it just below a simmer.
- Ten minutes is too longThe original calls for a thick piece, boned and skinned before it goes into the water. A boneless two-pound piece an inch thick is done in four to six minutes, when the flakes separate under gentle pressure. Thin modern fillets need three.
- Leave the skin on until after cookingSkin holds the fillet together in the pan and peels away cleanly once cooked. Pin bones also lift out far more easily from warm fish than raw.
- Do not salt the waterThe cure has already salted the fish. If your haddock is heavily smoked, poach in milk, or half milk and half water, which softens the salt and gives a liquid worth spooning over.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin laid on the hot platter absorbs the water that keeps seeping from poached fish so it does not sit in a puddle. A clean tea towel does the same job..
- Melted butter, served apartMelted butter, often with a squeeze of lemon, poured into a small hot jug. Plain melted or clarified butter is closer to the intent than a modern beurre blanc.
- YieldTwo pounds of boneless fish serves four generously as a lunch or supper dish, six as a first course.
Finnan haddie is generally held to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, though a derivation from Findhorn in Moray has also been argued. By the nineteenth century the split, lightly salted, cold-smoked haddock of the Scottish north-east coast was being sent by rail and steamer to London and beyond. It became a fixture of the British breakfast and supper table, and turns up in Scots kitchens poached in milk or worked into kedgeree and cullen skink. The technique itself is old and simple, since a cured fish needs only warming through, and the smoking was originally done to keep the catch rather than to flavour it.