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Steamed Cod
Wipe 4 cod steaks dry, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and melted Crisco on under side; lay on Criscoed platter, put another Criscoed platter over; set on top of saucepan of boiling water, and steam 3/4 of an hour, or until fish begins to leave bones. Serve with parsley sauce. For parsley sauce. Blend 2 tablespoons Crisco with 2 tablespoons flour in a pan over the fire, add 1 cup milk and stir till boiling, season with salt, pepper and red pepper, and stir and cook for 10 minutes, then add 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, and serve.
A plate-steamed fish from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks, where every fat measure was shortening by editorial policy. The technique is sound; the timing is not.
- The timing is the problemThree-quarters of an hour will reduce cod steaks to dry flakes in any efficient steamer. This makeshift plate arrangement heats slowly, so the original time may not be as absurd as it looks, but cook to doneness rather than the clock: inch-thick steaks are usually done once the flesh is opaque and separates from the bone with light pressure, and are worth checking early.
- Two-platter steamingThe method is an improvised double boiler: a heatproof plate over a pan of boiling water, with a second plate inverted on top as a cover. It works, but a steamer basket or a covered skillet with an inch of simmering water is easier to manage and gives more even heat.
- CriscoThe book was written to sell it, so shortening appears where a cook would otherwise use butter. For greasing the platters use any neutral oil or butter; for the sauce, butter gives noticeably better flavour.
- Red pepperThis means cayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A pinch is enough in a cup of white sauce.
- The parsley sauceA standard flour-thickened white sauce. Ten minutes of gentle cooking after it thickens is not excessive; it cooks out the raw-flour taste. Add the parsley off the heat so it stays green.
- YieldFour steaks serve four. The sauce quantity is generous for that number.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre of cookbook that flourished in the early twentieth century: the branded recipe collection, published by a manufacturer and written by a professional cookery author to demonstrate that a new product could do everything the old ones did. Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced in 1911, and books like this one worked steadily through the whole domestic repertoire substituting it for butter, lard and drippings, fish steaks and parsley sauce included. The plate-over-boiling-water method predates the book and was one of the improvised answers to steaming in kitchens without a purpose-made steamer; the trick of cooking fish between two plates is a long-standing one for keeping delicate fish moist without a specialised pan.