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For Broiling Mackerel
Grease broiler well and broil until a nice brown on each side. Put on platter, season with a little butter and pepper and serve; or place the fish on a well buttered dripping pan, skin side down, and let bake to a nice brown. This may be dressed in the same manner and add a few spoonfuls of rich cream. When well freshened, boil in a little water. Put on platter, season with butter and rich cream, pepper and serve.
Three methods for one fish, written for a cook who already knew what she was handling. The unspoken subject is salt mackerel — the phrase "when well freshened" gives it away — so the first work happens a day before the fire is lit.
- Freshening comes firstSalt mackerel needs a long soak in plenty of cold water; period directions commonly say skin side up, on the reasoning that the salt falls away rather than settling back into the flesh, and call for something like overnight with a change or two of water. The recipe assumes this step and gives no times. Skimp on it and no amount of butter and cream will pull back an oversalted fish.
- Fresh mackerel insteadIf you are using fresh mackerel, ignore the freshening entirely and salt the fish lightly before it goes on the heat. Split it down the back and open it flat; salt mackerel was sold split in this way, and the directions read as though the fish comes to the cook already opened.
- "Broiler" means the rackHere this is a hinged wire broiler held over coals or set close beneath a gas flame, not the drawer in a modern range. A well-greased grill rack or a very hot ridged pan gives the equivalent. Grease it before it heats — mackerel skin sticks readily.
- Broiling timeA split mackerel needs roughly 4 to 5 minutes on the flesh side and 2 to 3 on the skin side under a hot broiler. It is oily fish and browns fast; watch it rather than timing it.
- Baking temperatureThe original gives no oven setting at all, only "bake to a nice brown." A modern equivalent for a split fish is a hot oven, around 400F, for something like 20 to 25 minutes, skin side down as the recipe specifies. "A nice brown" is the doneness cue the original trusts, and it holds.
- The cream finishAdd the cream in the last few minutes of baking, or pour it hot over the fish on the platter. The recipe asks for "rich cream," so use the heaviest cream you have; thin cream will not give the same body.
- BoilingThe third method is really poaching — barely enough water to cover, brought just under a simmer, 8 to 10 minutes for a whole split fish. A hard boil breaks the flakes apart and drives the oil out into the water.
- Seasoning and yieldPepper only, as written. Even a well-freshened salt fish carries enough salt for the plate. One good-sized mackerel serves two.
Salt mackerel was a New England breakfast fixture through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, sold split, salted and packed in wooden kits, and kept in the cellar the way one kept salt pork. Mackerel is too oily to dry well, so it was cured wet in brine, which is why the freshening soak is assumed rather than explained. Broiled or baked salt mackerel with butter and cream appears in household manuals of the period, the cream being the concession to richness that turned a preserved fish into something worth setting on a platter. The terse, method-stacked form of the entry is typical of the era's fish chapters: the book expects you to know the fish and wants only to remind you of the three ways it can be treated.