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Fresh Haddock, Scotch Style
Procure a three-and-a-half-pound fresh haddock, cut off fins, head and tail, split open through front without separating, season inside with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, spread over a half ounce melted butter and fold up. Place on a lightly buttered tin, pour a very little melted butter over, then set in oven for fifty minutes; remove, dress on a hot dish, spread a little maitre d'hotel butter over, decorate with six quarters lemon, a little parsley greens, and serve.
A plain baked whole fish that depends almost entirely on not overcooking it and on the compound butter finishing it. Two things need translating: the oven temperature, which the original omits, and the timing, which belongs to a colder, slower range.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockFifty minutes is likely to overcook a split haddock in a modern oven. Bake at 375F and start checking at 20 minutes; the fish is done at 140-145F at the thickest part, or when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone.
- Oven settingNo temperature is given at all; the reader was expected to judge the range oven by hand. 375F suits a flat split fish and gives a little colour on the skin.
- Buying the fishA 3.5 lb whole haddock yields something under half its weight in edible flesh, enough for four. Ask the fishmonger to scale, gut and butterfly it through the belly, leaving the backbone in and the two sides joined along the back. Cod, hake or pollock behave the same way.
- "Split open through front without separating"This is a belly butterfly, not a fillet. The fish opens flat like a book, is seasoned on the cut face, then closed again so the seasoning and butter steam inside.
- Weights in ouncesHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. The "very little" poured over the outside is another tablespoon at most, brushed on rather than pooled.
- Maitre d'hotel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, roughly a tablespoon of parsley and two teaspoons of juice to four ounces of butter. Make it in advance, chill it, and lay slices on the hot fish so it melts at the table.
- On a buttered tinUse a shallow rimmed sheet or gratin dish, buttered or lined with parchment. Skin sticks badly to bare metal, and a whole split fish is difficult to lift intact once it does.
- ServingFour portions from a fish this size. The six lemon quarters and parsley are the whole garnish; the fish is dressed and sent to table whole on a hot dish.
Haddock is the Scottish fish above all others, and "Scotch style" in an American hotel kitchen of this period usually signalled the plain treatment associated with the east-coast fishing ports: a whole fish, split, buttered, baked, and finished with parsley butter and lemon, with no sauce beyond that. The great Scottish haddock preparations were smoked ones, Finnan haddie, generally traced to Findon in Aberdeenshire though Findhorn in Moray is a rival claim, and the Arbroath smokie, and this recipe is pointedly the alternative to them, calling for a fresh fish rather than the cured kind. Filippini's book gathers dishes under national labels for a hotel and household audience, so the label is doing the work of a menu heading as much as a claim of provenance. Maitre d'hotel butter, French in name and origin, sits on top without contradiction, a finish often used for grilled or baked fish whatever nation the dish was said to belong to.