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Findon Haddock, Cream Sauce (Remove skin and bones from two)
Remove skin and bones from two and a half pounds fat, smoked findon haddock, cut in half-inch pieces, plunge in a pint boiling water for five minutes, remove and drain on a sieve. Place in a small saucepan an ounce each butter and flour, and stir briskly while heating for a minute. Pour in a gill milk and a half gill cream, season with two saltspoons salt, saltspoon cayenne and a half saltspoon grated nutmeg; briskly stir until it comes to a boil, add haddock, toss well, cook for five minutes, pour into a deep hot dish and serve.
A Victorian-era breakfast and supper dish that survives intact in Scotland as finnan haddie in cream. The measurements are small and the seasoning assertive, so a little scaling judgment is needed.
- The hinge: blanch, then barely cookThe five-minute plunge in boiling water is not for doneness but to soften the fish and draw out excess salt and smoke. Smoked haddock is already cured and needs only to heat through, so the final five minutes in the sauce should be a gentle simmer, not a boil, or the flakes turn dry and stringy.
- Findon haddockAn old spelling of finnan haddie, cold-smoked haddock from the Aberdeenshire coast. Look for pale-gold undyed smoked haddock fillet; the bright yellow dyed sort is a different, wetter product and will not give the same firm flake.
- A gill, and a half gillIn American usage a gill is 4 fl oz (half a cup), so this reads as about 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream. (Note that a British imperial gill is 5 fl oz, which would make it a little more liquid.)
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The recipe therefore calls for about 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. Hold the salt back entirely until you have tasted the sauce with the fish in it, and treat the cayenne as generous by current standards.
- Sauce quantityAn ounce each of butter and flour with only 6 fl oz of liquid gives a very stiff roux-bound sauce for 2 1/2 lb of fish, which is how the dish was meant to be: barely napped rather than swimming. If you want it looser, add milk by the spoonful off the heat.
- Cook the flourOne minute of stirring is the minimum; give the butter and flour two to three minutes over moderate heat without letting it colour, or the sauce will taste pasty.
- YieldServes four to six as a main course with boiled potatoes or toast, more as part of a breakfast spread. A poached egg on top is a common accompaniment.
Finnan haddie is traditionally said to take its name from Findon, a fishing village south of Aberdeen, though Findhorn on the Moray Firth is also claimed; the cure is generally traced to that stretch of the northeast Scottish coast in the eighteenth century, where split haddock were dried and cold-smoked over peat and later over hardwood. By the time this book was compiled the fish travelled by rail and steamer well beyond Scotland, and smoked haddock in cream appeared on hotel and club breakfast tables in London and New York alike. The cream-sauce treatment reflects the practical problem of a heavily salted, heavily smoked product: blanching tames it, and butter, milk and nutmeg round off what remains.