Fish Pate
Free a pint of any cold cooked fish of skin and bone, and shred fine. Put into a saucepan and add 1 quart of milk, 2 well-beaten eggs, 1/4 of a cupful of flour mixed well with a little of the milk. Season with a little salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Stir until it is as thick as cream. Put alternate layers of sauce, fish, and bread crumbs into a buttered baking-dish, and set in the oven until it becomes a golden brown. It will take only a short time to cook.
A thrift dish for leftover cooked fish, closer to a gratin than to a modern smooth pâté. The sauce is the whole business: get it right and the rest is assembly.
- The sauce is made separatelyAs written the fish goes into the saucepan with the milk, yet the fish is then layered separately from the sauce. Make the sauce alone — milk, beaten eggs, flour slurry, seasoning — and keep the shredded fish out of the pan for layering.
- Guard the eggsTwo beaten eggs in a quart of milk can curdle if the pan runs much above a gentle simmer, though the flour in the mixture gives some protection. Warm it gently and stir constantly until it coats a spoon like heavy cream, then pull it off the heat.
- Flour to liquidA quarter cup of flour to a quart of milk gives a very loose sauce; the eggs do most of the thickening. If you want it to hold its layers, reduce the milk to a pint and a half or add another two tablespoons of flour.
- A pint of fishOld cookbooks measure shredded cooked fish by volume. A pint packed loosely is roughly ten to twelve ounces of cooked flesh — call it three quarters of a pound to a pound of raw fillet before cooking.
- Oven heatThe recipe names no oven heat; 'until it becomes a golden brown' in a short time suggests a fairly brisk oven. A moderately hot oven, around 375-400F, will set the custard and brown the top without splitting the sauce. Everything in the dish is already cooked.
- CrumbsPeriod recipes used both soft fresh crumbs and dried, grated stale crumbs, and this one does not specify. Coarse home-dried crumbs suit it; fine commercial crumbs turn pasty in the sauce.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a light hand; an eighth of a teaspoon is enough for the whole dish. The recipe asks only for 'a little', and more than that will dominate mild white fish.
- YieldEnough for four to six as a main course; allow a dish of two to three quarts, as the sauce, fish and crumbs together come to nearly two quarts. Let it stand five minutes before serving so the layers settle.
"Pâté" here is used loosely, for a dish bound with sauce and baked, rather than for the smooth potted terrine the word now suggests. The recipe belongs to a whole family of leftover-fish preparations — scallops, croquettes, timbales, creamed fish on toast — that filled the fish chapters of household manuals in an era when cooked fish would not keep long and had to be used up quickly. Layering fish with a milk sauce and crumbs stretched a small amount of flesh into a family meal, and the technique is indifferent to species, which is why the instruction begins simply with "any cold cooked fish."