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Spanish Mackerel, Aux Fines Herbes
Neatly trim, cut the head off of a two-pound fresh Spanish mackerel. Split in two, remove the spinal bone. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper. Lightly wet with a little milk, roll in flour. Heat one and a half tablespoons butter in a frying pan, place in the fish and fry for six minutes on each side. Lift up with a skimmer, dress on a hot dish. Squeeze the juice of half a small lemon over. Dredge over a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, a quarter teaspoon chopped chervil and a quarter teaspoon chopped chives. Pour the butter from the pan over the fish and serve.
A plain pan-fried fish with a herb finish, from the era when "aux fines herbes" on a menu meant something precise. Two things need attention: the cooking time and the size of the pan.
- TimingsSix minutes a side is far too long for two split halves of a two-pound mackerel, which are perhaps three-quarters of an inch at the thickest point. Three to four minutes on the skin side and two on the flesh side is enough; the fish is done when it flakes at the thickest part and the flesh has just turned opaque.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is conventionally reckoned as a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is about half a teaspoon. That is a lot of pepper for a two-pound fish by modern palates; a couple of good pinches may be closer to what you want.
- Butter quantityOne and a half tablespoons will brown and possibly burn before the fish is cooked, especially in a wide pan. Either use a heavier hand with the butter or start with a little neutral oil and add butter for the last minute so it foams rather than blackens.
- Pan sizeTwo halves of a two-pound fish need a 12-inch pan. Crowding steams the flour coating off; if the pan is small, cook the halves one at a time and keep the first warm.
- Split in two, remove the spinal boneThis is butterflying, not filleting: the fish is opened along the backbone and the spine lifted out, leaving two joined or separated sides with the skin on. A fishmonger will do it on request.
- ChervilThe one herb here that is genuinely hard to find. It is anise-scented and delicate; if unavailable, use a little tarragon and slightly more parsley rather than doubling the chives. Classic fines herbes is parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon, so tarragon is a legitimate substitute rather than a compromise.
- SkimmerA flat perforated lifter. A fish spatula does the job better; slide it under the skin side and support the fillet with a second spatula, as fried mackerel breaks easily.
- YieldA two-pound whole mackerel serves two generously. Serve immediately, since the butter and lemon are the whole sauce and they go dull as they cool.
Aux fines herbes is one of the shorthand phrases that carried classical French kitchen practice into English-language cookbooks, and The International Cook Book is exactly the sort of volume that assumed a reader would recognise it: a quartet of soft, fresh herbs, chopped fine at the last moment and generally added at the end rather than cooked long into the dish. Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus) is an Atlantic and Gulf fish that appears to have reached northern American markets on ice by the late nineteenth century, and its rich, firm flesh took well to frying and to an acid finish; the lemon here is doing the work that a heavier sauce would do for a leaner fish.