Baked Halibut
2 lbs. halibut 1 cupful tomatoes 2 tablespoonfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 3/4 teaspoonful salt 1/8 teaspoonful pepper Clean fish, season with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, place in Criscoed baking pan, pour over tomatoes, and dot with Crisco. Bake in a moderate oven, basting often.
Baked Salmon with Colbert Sauce For Sauce 1 slice salmon, 1 1/2 lbs. in weight 4 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley 1 tablespoonful tarragon vinegar 1 chopped shallot, gherkin and anchovy Salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste 4 tablespoonfuls Crisco 2 tablespoonfuls flour 1 teaspoonful lemon juice 3 anchovies 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Pepper to taste 2 cupfuls fish stock, or milk and water For fish. Mix Crisco with shallot, gherkin, anchovy, and seasonings, lay salmon in this mixture and let it "marinade," as it is called, for one hour. At the end of that time lift it out; do not shake off any ingredients that are sticking to it. Now lay it in a well Criscoed fireproof dish, cover it with a greased paper, and bake in moderate oven for thirty minutes. For sauce. Melt Crisco in small saucepan, stir in flour, add fish stock and stir until it boils and thickens. Rub anchovies through fine sieve, and add with seasonings. Serve in hot tureen with fish.
Two fish dishes from a Crisco promotional cookbook, where the shortening is written into every line whether it belongs there or not. Both are sound once you fix the oven and, more importantly, stop cooking the fish by the clock.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in this period is 350F. That works for both dishes; 375F is also fine for the halibut if you want the tomatoes to reduce a little.
- Cook to temperature, not timeThis is the hinge. Two pounds of halibut at 350F will be done in roughly 20 to 30 minutes depending on thickness, and the salmon in about the same. Pull either around 130F at the thickest point; halibut in particular turns dry and cottony past 135F, and the thirty minutes given for the salmon assumes a thick center-cut slice.
- Crisco substitutionsCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold but reformulated in the mid-2000s to cut trans fats. Butter or olive oil gives better flavor in both dishes; for the salmon marinade, melted butter or oil is the obvious swap since the fat is only there to carry the shallot, gherkin and anchovy.
- The tomatoes"1 cupful tomatoes" most likely means canned tomatoes, drained of their thinnest liquid and broken up, though fresh would serve. Too much watery juice will steam the fish rather than glaze it, and frequent basting keeps the pan sauce over the fish as it reduces.
- Greased paperParchment, cut to fit and buttered, laid directly on the salmon. It keeps the surface from drying while the fish comes up to temperature. Foil works but traps more steam.
- Fish stock or milk and waterTwo cups of fish stock makes the better sauce. The recipe's "milk and water" alternative presumably covers the cook with no trimmings on hand; use half milk, half water if you go that way, and expect a blander, whiter result.
- AnchoviesThree salt-packed or oil-packed fillets rubbed through a sieve. Modern anchovy paste, about two teaspoons, does the same job with less work. Salt the sauce at the very end, after the anchovies are in.
- YieldTwo pounds of halibut serves four; the pound-and-a-half salmon slice serves three to four. The sauce recipe makes roughly two cups, which is generous for that amount of fish.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a distinct genre: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks what to do with a new product. Crisco was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, and the recipe booklets that followed it inserted the shortening into every conceivable dish, including baked fish, where a period cook would more likely have reached for butter or salt pork. The Colbert sauce here is a loose descendant of the French classic; a true Colbert in the professional kitchen is properly a compound butter with tarragon and meat glaze, and the flour-thickened anchovy version given here reflects how English and American household books of the era simplified the grande cuisine repertoire into something a family cook could produce with a saucepan and a sieve. The gherkin, shallot and tarragon vinegar in the marinade are the same flavor set that shows up in remoulade and ravigote, both fixtures of turn-of-the-century fish cookery.