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Fresh Mackerel with Gooseberries
Cut off head and fins from a very fresh three-pound mackerel. Split in two through the back, remove the spinal bone. Season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, and place it on a lightly buttered baking dish. Spread a maitre d'hotel butter over the fish, then set in oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, dress on a dish, pour gooseberry sauce over and serve.
A compact recipe that assumes you already know two things it never explains: how to make maître d'hôtel butter, and what a gooseberry sauce is. It also assumes a cook standing at the oven, since no temperature is given.
- Oven temperatureNo setting is named; the recipe says only "oven." A butterflied mackerel of this size suits a fairly hot oven, around 400F; at a slacker heat it will simply take longer to colour.
- The 35 minutes is too longA 3 lb mackerel split flat is only an inch or so thick and will be done in 15 to 20 minutes at 400F, when the flesh has just lost its translucency at the thickest part. Held to the full thirty-five it goes dry and chalky, which is exactly the fault the rich butter and sharp sauce are meant to prevent.
- Maître d'hôtel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper — roughly 4 tablespoons butter to a tablespoon of parsley and a good squeeze of lemon for a fish this size. Spread it cold over the fish so it bastes as it melts.
- Gooseberry sauceGreen, hard, underripe gooseberries stewed in a little water until they collapse, then sieved and seasoned; barely sweetened, since the whole point is the acid. Fresh gooseberries are scarce in North America — frozen ones work, and a tart rhubarb or green apple puree is sometimes used instead.
- Buying the fish"Very fresh" is not a flourish. Mackerel is oily and spoils faster than almost any other fish; it should smell of nothing but sea and the eyes should be clear. Many fishmongers will split and bone it for you, which saves the awkward work of lifting the spine out of a whole fish.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper is right for a fish of this weight, but season the cut surfaces as well as the skin, not just the top.
- YieldA 3 lb whole mackerel serves two generously or three modestly once head, fins and bone are gone.
Mackerel with gooseberries is a long-established pairing in European cooking, and the French name for the fruit is generally taken to record it: groseille \mackerel currant. The logic is straightforward \oiliest of common fish, and the sourness of an unripe gooseberry cuts it the way lemon cuts a sardine. The two also come into season together in northern Europe in early summer, which is generally how such marriages arise. The dish is securely attested in English cookery books in the eighteenth century and appears in French kitchens as maquereau \its presence in an American "international" collection reflects the era's habit of gathering standard European restaurant dishes for home cooks, complete with the French compound butter and the assumption that the reader already knew what one was.