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Planked Whitefish
Clean and split a three-pound whitefish. Lay, skin side down, on a hot, well-greased oak plank (one and one-half inches thick and two or more inches longer and wider than the fish). Brush fish over with soft butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Surround fish with a border of coarse salt to prevent plank from burning. Bake twenty-five minutes in a hot oven, or place plank on broiler and broil twenty minutes under the gas flame. Remove to table covered with a sheet of brown paper, scrape off salt, wipe the edges of plank with a piece of cheese cloth wrung from hot water; spread fish with Maître d'Hôtel Butter; surround with a border made of hot mashed potato, passing it through pastry bag and rose tube, Garnish with sprays of parsley and sliced lemon. Serve immediately.
A plank dinner is mostly plank management: the wood has to be hot before the fish goes on, and it has to be protected from the direct heat once it is there. Everything else is straightforward roasting.
- The plank itselfUse untreated hardwood, not a thin grilling plank sold for smoking. Oil the board and heat it in the oven for 10-15 minutes before laying the fish on it; a cold plank steams the skin instead of setting it. Never wash a plank with soap - scrape it, wipe it, and re-oil.
- "A hot oven"The book gives no temperatures; "hot" in period usage is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty-five minutes at that heat is about right for a split three-pound fish; check for 145F at the thickest part, or that the flesh separates cleanly from the bone.
- The salt borderThis is the hinge of the recipe. A ridge of coarse salt around the fish keeps the exposed wood from charring and catching. Build it up properly - a scattering will not do the job. It is scraped away before serving and is not meant to season the fish.
- Broiling insteadTwenty minutes under a broiler assumes an old wide gas broiler with the flame well above the food. In a modern oven broiler the fish sits much closer to the element; lower the rack and watch it, or simply bake.
- WhitefishLake whitefish from the Great Lakes, a mild, fairly rich freshwater fish sold whole at three to four pounds. Fresh trout, char, or a small salmon behaves the same way on a plank. "Split" here means butterflied through the back and laid flat, skin down, not cut into two fillets.
- Maître d'Hôtel ButterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Make it ahead and chill it; the recipe spreads it over the cooked fish during the finishing, before the potato border and garnish go on.
- The potato borderPipe the mashed potato onto the plank only after the fish is cooked and the salt scraped off - potato piped before baking will scorch on the hot wood. A large star tube does what the period "rose tube" did.
- Table protection and yieldThe brown paper is spread on the surface the hot plank is set down on for finishing; a folded cloth or trivet does the same. The recipe gives no yield; a three-pound fish will feed about three, four at a stretch with the potatoes.
Planking is a Great Lakes and North Atlantic habit older than the ovens it was eventually moved into: fish nailed or propped on a board before an open fire, the wood both cooking surface and serving dish. Planked whitefish was a well-known Great Lakes hotel and restaurant dish in this period, and the theatre of the board arriving at the table was part of the appeal. The piped potato border and the maitre d'hotel butter are the marks of that restaurant style working its way into the home cook's Sunday - a professional garnish, scaled to a family fish. Lake whitefish is still commercially fished, though the Great Lakes catch is well below its nineteenth-century peak.