Turbot
Take a large white fish, steam until tender, take out bones, sprinkle with salt and pepper, heat a pint of milk, thicken with one-fourth pound flour; when cool add two eggs and one-fourth pound butter; put in a baking dish a layer of fish made fine, then a layer of sauce. Season with a very little onion, parsley and thyme as you like. Cover top with bread crumbs, bits of butter pepper and salt, bake one hour.
This is the dish American cookbooks of the period usually call "turbot à la crème" — no turbot in it, just white fish, a very stiff cream sauce, and a crumb top. Two things need attention: the flour is far more than a modern cook expects, and the baking time is far longer.
- There is no turbotTurbot is a European flatfish that was rarely on American markets; the name here describes the style of dish, not the ingredient. Halibut, cod, haddock or pollock all work, about 2 lb on the bone or 1 1/2 lb of fillet.
- A quarter pound of flour is a panada, not a sauceFour ounces of flour (close to a cup) into one pint of milk gives a paste stiff enough to hold a spoon upright — that is intentional, since it has to be firm enough to layer and to set around the fish. If you want something closer to a modern bechamel, use 2 to 3 oz and expect a looser, softer casserole. Cook the flour and milk together for several minutes so it does not taste raw.
- Cool it before the eggs go in"When cool" is the one instruction that matters. Stirred into hot panada the eggs scramble into threads; let it drop to hand temperature, then beat them in.
- Butter measureOne-fourth pound of butter is 1/2 cup, one American stick. Beat it into the cooled sauce along with the eggs.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for a covered-crumb fish dish of this kind.
- Cut the timeEverything in the dish is already cooked; 30 to 40 minutes at 350F is enough to set the custard and brown the crumbs. Longer than that and the fish dries and the sauce weeps.
- Seasoning"A very little onion" means it should not be raw crunch in the finished dish — grate it, or soften it in a little of the butter first. Fresh parsley and a pinch of thyme go into the sauce, not on top.
- YieldEnough for a 1 1/2 to 2 quart baking dish; serves four to six at supper, with bread and something acid alongside — pickles or lemon.
Creamed fish baked under crumbs was one of the standard American supper dishes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it turns up in community and church cookbooks under the borrowed name "turbot" or "turbot a la creme" far more often than actual turbot ever reached an inland kitchen. The borrowing is the point: turbot carried real prestige on European menus, and calling a dish of steamed cod and thick white sauce by that name gave a modest supper a French air. The construction also solved a practical problem, since it uses fish that has already been cooked and boned, holds well in a baking dish, and stretches a small amount of an expensive ingredient with milk, flour, butter and eggs — all things a household had on hand.