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Baked Red Snapper
Draw, clean, and then wipe a 5-pound red snapper. Wash it inside and out with salad-oil and lemon.
Make a stuffing of 1 well-beaten egg, 1 cupful of drained and chopped oysters, and half a cupful of powdered crackers. Add a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of onion juice, a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, 1/8 teaspoonful of paprika; moisten with cream and the oyster liquor until it is quite moist. After the fish is filled with the dressing sew the edges together. Put a layer of minced fat pork, together with a few slices of tomato and onion, on the grating of the roaster. Place the fish on this, and dredge the top with flour and salt, and place more minced pork on the top. Add a cupful of hot water and bake for about an hour in a hot oven, basting often. Serve with Hollandaise sauce.
A whole stuffed fish baked on a bed of pork and vegetables in a covered roasting pan — the method is sound, but several of the terms and the oven heat need translating.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere in the region of 400-450F, though the books rarely define it. The recipe itself says about an hour; start checking earlier, and cook until the thickest part of the flesh reaches 145F and the oyster-and-egg stuffing reaches 165F.
- The roasterThis means a deep covered oval roasting pan with a removable rack or "grating" inside, which traps steam. A modern roasting pan with a flat rack and a loose foil tent gives the same effect; the cup of hot water in the bottom keeps the pork and vegetables from scorching.
- Salad-oilSimply a mild neutral oil — olive or another table oil. Rubbing the cavity and skin with oil and lemon is a seasoning and firming step, not a wash; pat the fish dry afterward so the flour dredge browns.
- Powdered crackersPlain crackers crushed or rolled fine, about half a cup, equivalent to unseasoned cracker crumbs. Do not substitute seasoned breadcrumbs, which will oversalt a stuffing that already carries oysters, salt pork and a teaspoon of salt.
- Fat porkUnsmoked salt pork or fatback, minced. Blanch it briefly if it is very salty. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the nearest supermarket stand-in, though it brings a cure flavour the original did not have.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid that collects, or press grated onion through a sieve. A teaspoon takes about a quarter of a medium onion.
- Oysters in the stuffingChop them coarsely and fold them in last. They will cook through in the fish; do not pre-cook them, or the long bake leaves them tough. Reserve the liquor for moistening, as directed.
- Sewing and bastingKitchen twine and a trussing needle, or several short skewers laced with twine, close the cavity. Baste every 15 minutes with the pan liquid — this is what keeps a lean fish from drying at high heat.
- YieldA 5-lb whole snapper with stuffing serves six generously. Have the Hollandaise made after the fish comes out and hold it warm off the heat, not over it.