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Fresh Mackerel with Tarragon
Thoroughly wipe a nice, fresh three-pound mackerel, cut off head, split in two through back and remove spinal bone. Season with a teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, lightly baste with a little milk, then roll in flour. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon clarified butter in a frying pan, add fish and gently cook for six minutes on each side. Lift up with skimmer, dress on a hot dish, decorate with six quarters lemon, a little parsley greens, and serve with mayonnaise-tarragon sauce separately.
A plain pan-fried mackerel from the era when the fish was cheap, oily and best eaten the day it was landed. Two things need translating: the saltspoon measure and the sauce the recipe assumes you already know how to make.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of pepper is about 3/4 teaspoon — a firm but not excessive seasoning for a whole 3-lb fish split open.
- "Baste with a little milk"This means moisten the surface, not spoon liquid over it during cooking. Brush or dip the cut sides in milk so the flour has something to cling to; shake off the excess or you get a pasty crust rather than a thin one.
- Fat quantityOne tablespoon of clarified butter will not carry two halves of a 3-lb fish. Use enough to film the pan generously — 2 to 3 tablespoons — and clarified butter specifically, since whole butter's milk solids will scorch over the twelve minutes of cooking.
- TimingSix minutes a side suits thick fillets from a large mackerel. Smaller fish, or supermarket fillets an inch thick or less, are done in 3 to 4 minutes a side. Start skin side down and press briefly with a spatula so the skin stays flat and crisps.
- Splitting the fish"Split in two through back" means opening the fish along the spine rather than the belly; whether the two sides stayed joined at the belly skin or came apart as two pieces is not clear from the text. A fishmonger will do it; ask for the head off and the pinbones out as well.
- The sauceMayonnaise-tarragon sauce is not spelled out here, presumably because it was taken as familiar: mayonnaise loosened with a little tarragon vinegar and finished with chopped fresh tarragon. Serve it cold, alongside, as directed.
- FreshnessMackerel is very oily and turns rancid and strong-smelling faster than almost any other fish. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean sea smell, and cook it the day you buy it.
- YieldA 3-lb mackerel, split and fried, serves two generously or three modestly with potatoes and the sauce.
Mackerel was for centuries the fish of the poor and the hurried — so perishable that in London it was among the commodities allowed to be cried in the streets on a Sunday, a licence often traced to its refusal to keep overnight. Its high oil content makes it a natural for the frying pan and equally a natural partner for acid, which is why cookbooks of this period pair it almost reflexively with gooseberries, sorrel, vinegar or, as here, tarragon. The recipe belongs to the international grand-hotel style of the early twentieth century: precise little measures in saltspoons, clarified butter rather than plain, and a cold emulsion sauce sent to the table separately in a boat.