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Baked Halibut
Two pounds of halibut steak. Grease pan with a little butter, then lay a layer of steak, salt and pepper; sprinkle with bread crumbs, then another slice the same way. Make a custard with two eggs, one pint of milk, pour in pan. As it bakes, loosen at the edges and pile on fish. Bake Three-quarters of an hour or until done.
— Mrs. Eugene A. Chilson
A plain New England fish supper: halibut layered with crumbs and set in a thin baked custard. The original gives no oven temperature and no pan size, both of which decide whether this succeeds.
- Oven temperatureThe receipt gives none; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. A custard set much hotter will curdle and weep around the fish.
- Pan sizeUse a shallow baking dish just large enough to hold the steaks in two overlapping layers, roughly an 8-inch square or a small oval gratin. In a much wider dish the pint of milk spreads thin and will set poorly.
- The custard is deliberately thinTwo eggs to a pint of milk is a loose ratio, closer to a savoury sauce than a set custard. It is meant to thicken lightly and cling, not to slice, so do not be tempted to add more egg.
- "Loosen at the edges and pile on fish"This is the hinge of the recipe. Periodically during baking, run a knife round the rim where the custard sets first and spoon that thickened edge back over the fish. It bastes the halibut and keeps the custard from setting hard at the sides while the middle stays raw.
- Timing against thicknessThree-quarters of an hour suits steaks a good inch thick. Halibut sold thinner than that will be dry long before the custard sets; buy thick-cut pieces, or check at 30 minutes.
- DonenessThe fish is done at 145F, when it flakes and turns opaque to the bone. The custard should be just set with a slight tremble at the centre.
- Bread crumbsDry, coarse crumbs from stale bread, not fine packaged crumbs, which dissolve into the milk and thicken it to paste.
- YieldTwo pounds of steak serves four generously. Boiled potatoes and a lemon wedge would not be out of place, though the receipt suggests nothing.
Halibut was one of the great commercial fish of the North Atlantic in the late nineteenth century, and rail and ice together carried it far inland. Setting fish in a milk-and-egg custard belongs to a broad family of American "scalloped" dishes, in which crumbs and a thin binding sauce stretched a costly protein and kept it from drying in an uneven wood-fired oven; the same method turns up under the names scalloped fish, fish pudding and baked fish with crumbs throughout community cookbooks of the era. The attribution to Mrs. Eugene A. Chilson is typical of the genre: community fundraiser books were assembled from named household receipts, and the contributor's signature served as both credit and recommendation.