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Spanish Mackerel, Finnoise
Procure a fat, fresh Spanish mackerel of about two and a half pounds. Cut the head off, split it in two through the back, remove the spinal bone, wipe it neatly, slightly score and season with a teaspoon salt, one saltspoon white pepper; oil the parts with a tablespoon oil. Arrange it on a broiler and broil on a brisk fire for eight minutes on the split side and four minutes on the skin side. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve with a Finnoise sauce over it.
A very short recipe that assumes you already know its two supports: a coal broiler and a French sauce recipe printed elsewhere in the book. Both need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning is 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon white pepper for a 2 1/2 lb fish, which is about right for a butterflied whole fish.
- "Broiler" and "brisk fire"The broiler here is most likely a grid or wire broiler used over live coals rather than a modern oven element. A hot charcoal or gas grill is the closest equivalent; under a domestic broiler, set the fish 4-5 inches from the element on full heat.
- The timingsEight minutes plus four is credible over coals but easy to overshoot indoors. Cooks aiming for moist flesh often pull mackerel at 130-135F at the thickest part, below the 145F generally recommended for fish; a minute or two past that and the oil renders out and the fish turns dry and chalky.
- Split through the backButterflying from the back rather than the belly leaves the fillets joined at the belly skin so the fish stays in one piece on the grate. Lift the spine out with the tip of a knife along both sides; a fishmonger will do it if asked for a whole mackerel "kited" or butterflied.
- ScoringThe recipe says only "slightly score". Shallow diagonal cuts are conventionally made on the skin side, and they help keep the skin from contracting and curling the fish off the bars.
- Finnoise sauceNot a supermarket item. It is a period French kitchen sauce name; its composition cannot be established from this page, so the book's own sauce section is the thing to consult for the version this recipe intends.
- Buying the fishSpanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus) runs 1 1/2 to 3 lb and is sold fresh on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. If you cannot get it, a whole Atlantic mackerel or two, or a small bluefish, take the same treatment; the flesh should smell of nothing but the sea, as oily fish goes off fast.
- YieldA 2 1/2 lb whole fish, boned, serves two generously or three as part of a longer menu.
Filippini's The International Cook Book (1911) draws its recipes from many national kitchens, and "Finnoise" is the French kitchen's shorthand for Finnish-style, one of a number of such geographic sauce names in the professional repertoire around the turn of the century alongside hongroise, portugaise and polonaise. The names were classificatory rather than genuinely ethnographic. The fish, by contrast, is thoroughly American. Spanish mackerel was an important commercial catch of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in this period, shipped on ice to northern city markets, and a chef writing in New York could count on it in spring and summer. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's, pairs a local market fish with a classical French sauce, which is much of what the book's promise of an international kitchen meant to his readers.