Boiled Mackerel
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Thoroughly clean the fish and place it in a kettle.
Poach
Cover it with cold water and add plenty of salt (about 1 ounce per quart).
Bring it slowly to a boil.
Skim and simmer until done.
Serve
Dish on a hot napkin and serve with fennel sauce.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Mackerel
- Forms the main body of the dish, its flesh firming and turning opaque as it cooks.
- Cold water
- Acts as the poaching liquid, carrying heat gently and evenly around the fish.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the fish through the poaching water and firms the flesh slightly.
The step that matters
Bring to a boil slowly, then simmer gently. Heating slowly and then holding a gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps its flesh intact. A hard, rolling boil can toughen the outside and break the fish apart.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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