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Fresh Cod, Baked
Get the fish vender to dress it clean, but not cut it entirely open. Prepare a rich forcemeat made of bread crumbs, fat pork, parsley, sweet marjoram, salt and pepper; then fill the fish with this preparation, and confine the openings with small skewers; put four or five cuts on each side of the fish; dredge well with flour and salt; put in a dripping pan, with water enough to cover the bottom; bake until thoroughly done; baste with butter and tomato catsup. Stir little flour and butter into the liquor for gravy, and serve hot.
TURBOT A LA CRÊME.
Procure a nice fresh fish, boil done, and pick out the bones; season with pepper, and salt; to one quart of milk, add a good teacup of flour; put with this a sprig of thyme, small bunch of parsley, four or five small onions, salt, a small quantity of white pepper. Place this on the fire; make into a paste; then remove, and add half pound of butter and yolks of two eggs. Mix well and pass through a sieve; pour some of this sauce into a baking dish, then a layer of the fish alternating until it is all used. Pour some of the sauce on the top, and lastly put a layer of grated cheese and bread crumbs.
Bake thirty-five or forty minutes.
Two recipes run together here: a stuffed whole baked cod, and a gratin of flaked fish in a heavy cream sauce. Both assume a cook who knows what a finished fish looks like, since neither gives a temperature or a weight.
- "Dress it clean, but not cut it entirely open"The fishmonger should gut and scale the fish through the gills or a short belly slit so the body cavity stays a closed pocket for the stuffing. Ask for a whole cod of 4-6 lb, scaled, gutted, gills removed, head on.
- Oven and donenessThe recipe gives no temperature; 375F is a workable modern setting. A stuffed 5 lb fish takes roughly 45-60 minutes; go by an instant-read thermometer at the thickest part of the shoulder, 145F, rather than by the clock. The slashes cut in the sides would let heat in and help keep the skin from curling.
- Fat porkIn recipes of this kind this usually means salt pork. Salt pork varies a good deal in saltiness, so blanch a 4 oz piece in simmering water for five minutes before chopping it fine into the crumbs, and go easy on the added salt. Unsmoked bacon works as a substitute.
- Forcemeat proportionsNone are given. For a 5 lb fish, about 3 cups fresh breadcrumbs, 4 oz chopped salt pork, a handful of parsley, a teaspoon of chopped marjoram, pepper, and an egg with a little stock to bind gives a stuffing that holds together when the fish is carved.
- Skewers and waterSmall metal skewers laced with kitchen string still work; toothpicks will burn. The water in the dripping pan is there to keep the drippings from scorching into gravy-spoiling bitterness, not to poach the fish, so a quarter inch is enough and it may need topping up.
- Tomato catsupPeriod catsup was thinner, sharper and more spiced than the sweet modern condiment. Basting with butter and a tablespoon or two of a plain tomato ketchup loosened with the pan liquid is closer to the intent than brushing on straight ketchup.
- Turbot a la crème: the fishTurbot a la creme: the fish -- True turbot is expensive and rarely stocked in the United States. Any firm white fish poached and flaked works, and American versions of the dish often used cod or halibut despite the name.
- That sauce is a panadaThat sauce is a very thick flour-and-milk paste -- A quart of milk to a teacup of flour makes something close to a very stiff white sauce. Cook the flour and milk together, stirring hard, until it pulls from the pan; take it off the heat before beating in the butter and yolks so the eggs do not scramble. Straining through a sieve removes the thyme, parsley and onion, which are there for flavour only and are not meant to be eaten.
- Baking the gratinThe recipe gives 35-40 minutes but no heat; a moderate oven of about 375F will brown the cheese and crumb top and heat the assembly through. No yields are given; on the quantities here each dish would serve roughly six to eight.
Cod anchored the American fish counter well into the twentieth century, and a whole stuffed baked cod was one familiar way for a household to put a large, cheap fish on the table with some ceremony. The forcemeat of crumbs, salt pork and sweet herbs is essentially the old English stuffing for baked fish, and marjoram in particular was a common seasoning in nineteenth-century American kitchens that has since drifted out of everyday use. Turbot \ la cr e shows the other face of the period's fish cookery: a restaurant-French name attached to what is in practice a homely gratin of boiled fish under a thick, egg-enriched sauce and browned crumbs. Turbot is a North Sea flatfish, prized in France and Britain and largely unavailable to American cooks, so the name functioned as a menu flourish rather than a shopping list.