Elisabeth Ayrton

Baked Mackerel

Preparation info
  • Serves

    4

    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
English Provincial Cooking
English Provincial Cooking

By Elisabeth Ayrton

Published 1980

  • About

The Cornish have cooked mackerel and pilchards in many different ways for the last five centuries.

This is a dish from a manor house in south Cornwall. Serve with green peas flavoured with mint. Pilchards, herring and whiting may be cooked in the same way.

Ingredients

  • 4 medium mackerel, opened only enough to clean them, with heads and tails removed
  • 1¼ sticks (150 g) butter

Method

Grease a shallow ovenproof dish lavishly with about one-third of the butter. Lay the mackerel in the dish head to tail, backs upwards. Mix the wine, vinegar, cayenne, salt and pepper and pour over the fish.

Mash half the remaining butter with the flour and divide the mixture into 4 pieces. Pr