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Baked Rock
Boil until well done. Then remove the bones. Season with butter, pepper, salt and cream. Sprinkle stale bread crumbs over the top. Bake in a flat dish.
A two-stage dish typical of turn-of-the-century American fish cookery: poach, flake, enrich, then brown. The original assumes you know the proportions, so the useful work is filling those in.
- What "rock" isOn the Atlantic coast "rock" or "rockfish" means striped bass; on the Pacific coast the same word covers dozens of species, most of them in the genus Sebastes. Either works here, as will any firm white fish that flakes in large pieces. Figure about 2 lb of whole fish, or roughly 1 lb of fillet, for four servings.
- "Boil until well done"Do not actually boil. Bring salted water or a light court-bouillon to a bare shiver and poach until the flesh is opaque at the thickest point, 8 to 10 minutes for a thick fillet, longer for a whole fish. Hard boiling squeezes the albumin out and leaves the flakes dry and cottony before you ever get to the oven.
- BonesRemoving bones is far easier while the fish is warm but not hot. Lift the fillets off the frame, run a finger down the centre line for pin bones, and keep the flakes as large as you can — the dish reads as fish, not paste, if the pieces stay intact.
- Seasoning proportionsFor a pound of cooked flesh, about 2 tablespoons butter and 1/2 cup cream is a fair reading of the original. Add the cream a little at a time; it should moisten the flakes, not float them.
- Stale bread crumbsIn period cookbooks "stale bread crumbs" generally means dry bread grated, coarser and drier than commercial fine crumbs. Toss them with a little melted butter or they will scorch in patches rather than browning evenly.
- The dish and the ovenA "flat dish" is a shallow gratin or pie plate — depth is the enemy here, since the point is surface area for the crust. Bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, just long enough to heat through and colour the top. The fish is already cooked; longer only dries it.
- Yield and servingServes four as a main course with potatoes, or six as part of a larger meal. A squeeze of lemon and chopped parsley at the table are period-appropriate and correct the richness of the cream.
Striped bass was one of the great food fishes of the Chesapeake and the Hudson, cheap and abundant enough at the turn of the century that a cookbook could print "Baked Rock" with no further explanation of what rock was — the assumption being that a reader already knew. The method here is the standard household treatment for cooked fish of any kind: poach, bone, bind with butter and cream, crumb, brown. It is generally traced to the English scalloped-fish tradition and is first cousin to fish pie and to the American "scallop" of oysters. Its real virtue was economy, since the same formula turned yesterday's boiled fish into today's baked dish without waste. Wild striped bass stocks collapsed later in the twentieth century and were rebuilt under strict management; the fish is no longer the throwaway staple this recipe takes it to be.