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Fresh Broiled Devilled Haddock
Neatly trim and split in two through the back a fine fresh three pound haddock, remove spinal bone and thoroughly wipe. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Repeatedly turn fish in seasoning, arrange on a broiler and broil four minutes on each side, remove, spread a devilled butter on both sides of fish, then lightly roll in bread crumbs, place on a double broiler and broil two minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A gridiron recipe written for a coal or gas broiler with the fish close to the flame. The hinge is the two-stage cooking: the fish is nearly done before the devilled butter and crumbs go on, so the coating only has to brown.
- "Broiler" means the grill, not a panIn 1900s American kitchen usage a broiler is the wire gridiron that sits under or over direct heat. A "double broiler" is the hinged two-sided wire fish grill that clamps the split fish so it can be turned without the crumb crust tearing away. A modern oven broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element, or a hinged grill basket over a charcoal fire, both work.
- Devilled butterThe recipe does not give a formula, and the book presumably carries one elsewhere. Devilled butters of the period are generally softened butter worked with mustard, cayenne, and often a little Worcestershire and lemon; something on the order of 3 tablespoons butter to a teaspoon of dry mustard and a good pinch of cayenne will do. Devilling normally implies mustard together with something hot.
- Splitting the fishSplitting through the back and lifting out the spine gives you a flat butterflied fish still joined at the belly. Any fishmonger will do this; ask for it kited or butterflied, and have the pinbones pulled at the same time.
- Total cooking timeEight minutes plus four is right for a 3 lb fish split flat and cooked close to strong heat, and it will not tolerate much more. Haddock is lean and flakes dry fast. Go by the flesh turning opaque at the thickest part beside where the backbone was.
- CrumbsDry white breadcrumbs, not the coarse panko sort, which will scorch before the two minutes are up. Press them on lightly over the butter; the butter is the glue.
- Size and substitutesA whole 3 lb haddock is a modest fish. Cod, pollock, hake or black sea bass of the same size behave the same way. Thick single fillets can be given the same treatment but need no turning.
- YieldA 3 lb whole fish serves three, four at a stretch.
Devilling — coating something in mustard and cayenne and finishing it over fierce heat — was an English tavern and supper-table habit that American hotel kitchens took up, and it was applied to kidneys, bones of cold roast fowl, biscuits, crab and above all fish. The word carries the old association of the devil with heat and pungency, and it appears in English cookery writing well before this book. Haddock was one of the great cheap workhorses of the North Atlantic fisheries, landed in quantity at Boston and Gloucester and sold fresh in the cities within a day or two by rail and ice, which is what "fresh" in the title is insisting on: much haddock reached the table salted or smoked instead. The two-stage broiling, seasoned first and crumbed only at the end, is a professional's sequence, and the assumed hinged double broiler suggests a writer familiar with a restaurant range.