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Spanish Mackerel, Piquante Sauce
Trim fins and cut off head of a very fresh three-pound Spanish mackerel, split in two, remove spinal bone and lay on a lightly buttered tin. Season with one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika, squeeze juice of half a sound lemon over, lightly baste with melted butter, then set in oven for thirty minutes. Remove, dress on a large dish, pour a piquante sauce and sprinkle a little chopped parsley over, then serve.
A straightforward baked split fish that depends on two things the original leaves unstated: the oven temperature and what "piquante sauce" means.
- Oven heatThe recipe names no temperature. A hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, suits a split flat-laid fish; at that heat a 3 lb mackerel split in two is likely done before thirty minutes.
- TimingThirty minutes is long by modern practice. Measure the thickest part and reckon about 10 minutes per inch; a split mackerel half is usually 12 to 18 minutes, until the flesh just flakes at the backbone line. Cooks often pull oily fish at 130-135F, though the usual food-safety figure for fish is 145F.
- Piquante sauceIn the period this means a brown sauce reduced with vinegar and shallot and finished with chopped gherkins or capers, sometimes with a little mustard in Anglo-American versions. The recipe assumes you have one on hand or will make it separately; it is not part of the fish's cooking.
- "Buttered tin"A shallow rimmed baking sheet or a metal roasting tin. Line it with parchment if you want the skin to release cleanly, since mackerel skin sticks readily.
- Splitting the fish"Split in two" with the spinal bone removed means the fish is opened along the backbone and the spine and rib bones lifted out, yielding two sides (some cooks leave it hinged in one piece). A fishmonger will do this if asked for the fish "split and boned, skin on."
- PaprikaHalf a teaspoon here is for colour and mild warmth, and means plain sweet paprika rather than anything smoked; smoked paprika will dominate the fish.
- Freshness"Very fresh" is not decoration. Spanish mackerel is an oily fish that turns strong and metallic within a day or two; buy it firm, bright-eyed and smelling of clean seawater, and cook it the same day.
- YieldA 3 lb whole fish, headed and boned, serves three to four as a main course.
Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus) was a prized Atlantic and Gulf market fish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reaching northern hotel kitchens on ice and generally rated above common mackerel, and often broiled or baked plain. Sauce piquante belongs to the French classical repertoire that governed American hotel cooking of the period: a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar and gherkins, and it appears among the compound brown sauces in Escoffier's work. Pairing the two suits a book called The International Cook Book, where an American market fish is dressed in a French sauce and served under a menu-French title. The instruction to "dress on a large dish" and finish with chopped parsley points to platter service rather than plating in the kitchen.