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Boiled Salt Mackerel, Butter Sauce
Soak in cold water during night two salt mackerel; remove the spinal bones. Place them in a sautoire with a quart hot water and boil for ten minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with parsley greens, and serve with 'a little melted butter separately.
A plain salt-fish supper from the era when barrelled mackerel was a pantry staple. The whole dish turns on the soak and on not letting the water reach a hard boil.
- The soak is the recipeOvernight in cold water is the minimum for heavily salted mackerel; change the water two or three times if you can, and taste a sliver of the raw flesh before cooking. If it is still aggressively salty, keep soaking. Modern "salt mackerel" sold in tubs is often only lightly cured and may need just a few hours.
- SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, wide enough to hold the fish flat in a single layer. Any large skillet or saute pan with a lid works; the point is that the fish is barely covered by liquid, not swimming.
- "Boil for ten minutes"The original says boil, but a bare shiver treats the fish better: a rolling boil shreds the fillets and squeezes them dry. Depending on thickness, salt mackerel may be done in rather less than ten minutes at a gentle poach -- test when the flesh flakes at the thickest point.
- Do not salt the waterThe quart of hot water is there only as a poaching medium. The fish carries all the salt the dish needs, and its purpose here is partly to release more of it.
- Spinal bonesRemoving the backbone from a soaked salt mackerel is easiest with the fish laid skin-down: lift the bone from the tail end and work forward, then run a fingertip along the fillet for the fine pin bones the original does not mention.
- "A little melted butter"In period kitchens this often meant drawn butter, sometimes lightly thickened, served in a boat alongside. Melted butter with lemon and chopped parsley is entirely in keeping and offsets the salt.
- The folded napkinA period service convention: the linen sits on the hot platter to absorb poaching water that drains from the fish. It is worth doing, or at least drain the fillets well, since pooled liquid thins the butter on the plate.
- YieldTwo mackerel serve two generously or four as a light course; boiled potatoes are a common period accompaniment.
Salt mackerel was one of the great cheap proteins of the North Atlantic world. Mackerel spoils faster than almost any other fish, so before reliable refrigeration the catch was split, brined and packed in barrels graded by size and quality, then shipped inland by the ton; New England and Nova Scotia ports built substantial trade on it, and it turned up on breakfast and Friday tables in cities far from any coast. The treatment here "soak, poach, drawn butter, parsley, folded napkin" appears to reflect a common hotel and restaurant handling of boiled fish in Filippini's generation, applied to the humblest possible material: a barrel fish dressed with the formal service of a French dining room.