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Oven-Broiled Fish
Prepare the fish as described in the preceding recipe, and lay it in a pan very well oiled with Snowdrift. Dot quite thoroughly with Snowdrift, place it in a hot oven, from 375 to 400 degrees F., and bake it quickly, allowing about fifteen minutes for fish cut in slices an inch thick, and about twentyfive minutes for a fish weighing a pound and a half, which has been split. When done, dot with a little additional Snowdrift, let stand for a few moments to absorb it, and serve with or without lemon, a dusting of minced parsley, or any of the sauces enumerated in the preceding recipe.
A straightforward high-heat bake that the book calls broiling because the fish cooks fast and dry rather than under a flame. The only real translation needed is the shortening.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company; the book is a promotional one for the product, which it names in every step here. Use butter, or olive oil if you want the pan and the finish to taste of something.
- "Oven-broiled"In 1910s usage this meant baking uncovered in a hot oven so the surface browns, not cooking under a broiler element. Keep the pan on an upper rack and leave it uncovered.
- TemperatureThe original already gives 375-400F, a numbered range rather than the older 'quick oven'. 400F is the better choice for the browning the method is after.
- TimingFifteen minutes for inch-thick slices is close to the modern rule of about 10 minutes per inch, and twenty-five for a split pound-and-a-half fish is generous. Check early: fish is done at 145F, or when the flesh parts from the bone and has just lost its translucency.
- The finishing dotThe last addition of fat off the heat is the point of the dish. Cold butter dotted over hot fish and left two minutes gives a light sauce; skip it and the fish is merely baked.
- The missing saucesThe "preceding recipe" refers to a page not reproduced here, so its list is unknown. Drawn butter, hollandaise, egg sauce or maitre d'hotel butter all suit this treatment.
- YieldA split fish of a pound and a half serves two; allow about six ounces of fish per person for slices.
This comes from a promotional cookbook for Snowdrift, one of the hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortenings that reshaped American cooking in the first decades of the twentieth century, when cottonseed processing gave the South a cheap alternative to lard and butter. Books like this were given away or sold for pennies, and the product is named in the recipe more than once, as here. The dish itself is older than the shortening: oven-broiling is often said to have been a workaround for cooks without a proper gridiron or a coal fire steady enough to broil over, and it persisted into the gas-range era. That the recipe cites actual Fahrenheit numbers rather than "a quick oven" may suggest a later date, though that is inference rather than established fact.