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Halibut Baked with Milk
Scrape the dark skin of the halibut, dipping it in boiling water. Lay the fish in the baking-pan, first rubbing it well with salt and white pepper. Pour around it 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of milk. Bake until the flesh loosens and separates from the bone, basting often with the milk. A 4-pound cut of halibut will require nearly an hour to cook thoroughly. The milk should nearly all cook away or absorb in the fish, and will serve to make it more moist. When done remove to the hot platter without breaking, take off the skin, lift out the bone, garnish with slices of lemon and hard-boiled egg, and serve with cream sauce, plain drawn butter, or egg sauce.
This may be varied by filling the cavity left by the bone with buttered crumbs moistened slightly with a little cream sauce, dotting with bits of butter, and putting in the oven until well browned. Serve with tomato sauce.
A plain baked centre cut of halibut, moistened with milk rather than fat. The one thing worth changing is the timing: modern halibut is leaner-handled and dries out badly past medium.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Bake at 350F, or 400F if you want the surface to colour; much hotter and the milk in the pan is liable to catch and scorch.
- Cook to temperature, not to the hour"Nearly an hour" for a 4-lb cut reflects a period preference for fish cooked well through. Pull it at 130-135F at the thickest point; the familiar guide of about 10 minutes per inch of thickness (in a hot oven -- allow longer at 350F) puts a thick 4-lb cut nearer 30-40 minutes. The flesh will still separate from the bone.
- The cutA "4-pound cut of halibut" means a bone-in cross-section steak or a piece of the middle, not a fillet. Ask for a centre cut on the bone; two thick steaks will behave differently and cook much faster.
- Scraping the skinDipping in boiling water loosens the dark skin so it scrapes clean. A brief dip only, a few seconds, or the outer layer of flesh begins to set and tears when you scrape.
- The milkHalf to three-quarters of a cup for a 4-lb cut is deliberately scant, meant to reduce to a glaze rather than poach the fish. Baste every ten minutes; if it threatens to dry out and catch before the fish is done, add a spoonful more rather than a fresh half cup.
- Drawn butterNot clarified butter, as the term means today. In American books of this period drawn butter is a light butter-and-flour sauce thinned with water or fish stock, closer to a plain white sauce.
- Egg sauceChopped hard-boiled egg stirred through a white or drawn-butter sauce. It is a common partner for baked white fish and the natural match for the egg garnish.
- The crumb variationFill the bone cavity only after the fish is cooked and boned, then return it to a hot oven just long enough to brown the crumbs -- a matter of minutes. Any longer and the fish overcooks in its second bake.
- YieldA 4-lb bone-in cut serves six to eight, allowing for the weight lost to bone and skin.