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Mackerel
(Germany.) Clean and score across the back a large fresh fish, add two cups of hot water, a teaspoonful of salt, an onion, and two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Cook 40 minutes, drain it, reduce the sauce, strain it, and add 1 dozen capers; cook a few minutes longer and pour over the fish.
A plain German-style poached mackerel in a vinegar-and-onion court bouillon, with the cooking liquid reduced into a caper sauce. The one thing that needs rewriting is the timing.
- Forty minutes is far too longA whole mackerel of 1 to 1 1/2 lb is done in 12 to 15 minutes at a bare simmer; thick fillets need 6 to 8. Mackerel is oily but its flesh is delicate, and forty minutes reduces it to shreds. Cook until the flesh at the backbone has just lost its translucency.
- Simmer, never boilThe liquid should shiver rather than bubble. A rolling boil splits the scored skin and clouds the broth you are about to reduce into sauce.
- Score across the backTwo or three shallow diagonal cuts through the skin on each side, down to but not into the bone. They let the salted vinegar liquid reach the thickest part so it cooks evenly, and they keep the skin from bursting.
- Two cups of water is a shallow poachThe fish will be partly poached and partly steamed rather than submerged. Use a pan just large enough to hold the fish, cover it, and turn the fish once.
- The onionSlice it thin rather than leaving it whole, or it will contribute little in fifteen minutes. It is strained out before the capers go in.
- Reducing the sauceStrain the liquid and reduce it over brisk heat until it has body. A tablespoon of butter whisked in off the heat will enrich it, though the original calls for no fat at all.
- CapersA dozen small capers is a modest hand. Rinse brined capers, or rinse and soak salted ones, and add them at the end so they only warm through.
- Freshness matters more here than with most fishMackerel's high oil content turns rancid fast. Look for firm flesh, clear eyes and a clean smell; anything soft or strongly fishy should not go in the pan.
- YieldOne large mackerel serves two, or three at a light meal, with boiled potatoes to catch the sauce.
Mackerel poached in salted water sharpened with vinegar is a standard of northern German cooking, where the sourness cuts the oiliness of the fish. The caper finish belongs to the same family as other treatments of poached fish, where a reduced court bouillon with capers or a caper-butter stands in for a richer sauce. This book collects short recipes gathered under national headings, and the entry is typical of the genre: enough for a cook who already knows how a fish behaves in a pan, and no more. The forty-minute instruction seems to reflect a period convention rather than the fish.