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Spanish Mackerel, New Rochelle
Trim off the fins and remove the head of a three-pound fresh Spanish mackerel. Split it in two through the back, remove the spinal bones, then lay the fish on a lightly buttered tin, cut part downward, and season with light teaspoon salt and three saltspoons paprika. Spread a maitre d'hotel butter evenly over the fish, set in the oven for twenty minutes, being careful to baste the fish with the butter once in a while. Remove to a table. Pick off the stalks and stale leaves from a quart of fresh spinach, wash it in several changes of water, drain on a colander, then plunge into a saucepan with two quarts boiling water, and a teaspoon salt. Boil for ten minutes, drain on a sieve, press out all the water with a skimmer, then finely chop them and place in a small sauteuse with two egg-yolks, half ounce butter, three saltspoons salt, three saltspoons sugar, two saltspoons white pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Sharply stir on the fire with a wooden spoon for two minutes. Spread the spinach with a knife blade over the mackerel, sprinkle two tablespoons fresh bread crumbs over, set in the oven for ten minutes, remove, carefully dress on a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward baked mackerel with a spinach gratin topping. The only real difficulties are the archaic small measures and a spinach boil that belongs to another era.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons paprika is therefore about 3/4 teaspoon; two saltspoons white pepper is 1/2 teaspoon; half a saltspoon nutmeg is a scant 1/8 teaspoon.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was normal. Bake at 375F: the fish needs 15-20 minutes to reach 145F at the thickest point, and the crumb-topped return needs only long enough to brown.
- Maitre d'hotel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. About 3 to 4 ounces, softened, is right for a three-pound fish; it is the basting medium as much as a seasoning.
- The spinachTen minutes of boiling will give you olive-drab mush. Two minutes in the salted water, or a covered pan with just its own moisture, is enough. Squeeze it hard afterwards, since wet spinach will slide off the fish.
- Egg yolks in the sauteuseThe two minutes of sharp stirring over heat is what binds the spinach into a spreadable paste. Keep the pan on low and moving, or the yolks scramble and the mixture breaks.
- SauteuseA shallow saute pan, usually with sloping or curved sides rather than straight ones. Any small skillet works; the point is wide surface area so the moisture drives off while the yolks set.
- BoningSplitting through the back and lifting out the spine leaves one flat piece skin-side down. A fishmonger will do it if asked for a butterflied mackerel, head off.
- YieldA three-pound whole fish serves three, perhaps four with substantial sides.
Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus) was a prestige fish on the Atlantic seaboard in the years around 1900, milder and finer-grained than the oilier common Boston mackerel, and it appeared constantly on New York hotel and steamship menus in summer. The place-name suffix is standard restaurant shorthand of the period, in which every variation on a fish or a garnish was christened after a town, a patron or a chef; New Rochelle, on Long Island Sound just north of the city, was then a fashionable shore resort and yacht-club address, which is presumably the association intended. The dish itself is a florentine in all but name: fish under a bound spinach puree, crumbed and browned. The sweetened, nutmeg-scented spinach is the older French treatment, suggesting something closer to a Renaissance-style spinach tart filling than to anything a modern kitchen would put beside fish, though the lineage is an impression rather than a documented derivation, and it is one of the clearest signs of the book's date.