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Stuffing for Fish (Cup cracker crumbs teaspoons)
1 cup cracker crumbs. 2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley. 1 tablespoon finely chopped pickles. 1 teaspoon salt. 1 teaspoon grated onion. 3 tablespoons butter. 1/4 to 1/2 cup boiling water.
PROCESS: Melt butter in hot water; add remaining ingredients in the order given. Mix lightly with a fork.
A plain bread-type stuffing built on cracker crumbs rather than bread, meant for a whole baked fish. It comes together in about five minutes, and the only thing that can go wrong is overworking it.
- Mix lightly, and stop earlyThe fork instruction is the hinge. Cracker crumbs keep absorbing liquid for a minute or two after mixing, so a stuffing that looks slightly dry in the bowl will be correct in the fish. Stirred to a paste, it bakes into a dense plug.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod recipes generally mean plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine. Saltines are the closest supermarket equivalent, but they carry their own salt — taste before adding the full teaspoon. Roughly 25 to 30 saltines will give a cup of crumbs.
- The water quantity is deliberately vagueThe range from 1/4 to 1/2 cup is presumably there because crackers vary in absorbency. Add the smaller amount, mix, wait a moment, then add more only if the crumbs are still loose and powdery.
- PicklesIn American cookbooks of this period an unqualified "pickle" usually means a sour cucumber pickle in brine rather than a sweet gherkin. Sweet pickle will work but pushes the stuffing in a very different direction.
- Grated onionGrated rather than chopped is intentional: it releases juice and disappears into the crumbs instead of staying raw and crunchy through a short bake. Use the fine side of a box grater and include the liquid.
- YieldSomething around a cup and a half, which would fill the cavity of a small whole fish. The recipe does not say what size fish it is meant for, or how to close it.
- CookingThe stuffing is raw as mixed and is intended to be baked inside the fish. The recipe itself gives no oven temperature or timing; cook the fish until the flesh at the backbone flakes.
Cracker-crumb stuffings were a staple of American coastal cookery through the nineteenth century, when barrels of hard water crackers were a common pantry item. The crumbs stay distinct and slightly chewy where bread turns to pudding, which suited a moist baked fish. The pickle is the telling detail: a sharp acid note against oily fish flesh, the same instinct that puts a lemon wedge on the plate today. 52 Sunday Dinners belongs to a genre of menu-planning cookbooks that gave the American housewife a full meal for each week of the year, and its recipes are written tersely, on the assumption that the cook already knows how to bone and bake a fish.