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Stuffed Sea Bass
After cleaning and wiping the fish, lay it in a marinade of salad oil and vinegar. Fill the fish with minced salt pork and fresh mushrooms, if you can get them; if not, use chopped champignons.
Bake the fish as directed in the last recipe, placing thin slices of pork underneath and on top of the fish. After it has baked about forty minutes, cover with thin slices of tomatoes and half of a minced sweet green pepper. Put some bits of butter upon the tomatoes and bake for twenty minutes more. Take the fish from the pan and set to one side. Strain the gravy, rubbing the pepper and tomatoes through a colander, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, add a teaspoonful of sugar, and 2 of onion juice; turn in a little hot water if it is too thick. Boil one minute, then pour part over the fish and the rest into the gravy-boat.
Both bluefish and muskalonge are good treated in the same way.
A whole baked fish in the elaborate late-Victorian manner: larded with salt pork, stuffed with mushrooms, then finished under tomato and green pepper and served with a strained pan gravy. The one thing to change is the timing.
- The hinge: total baking timeForty minutes plus a further twenty will overcook a whole fish of ordinary size. A 3-4 lb sea bass is done when the thickest flesh at the backbone reaches 145F; in a moderate oven (around 375F, though the recipe gives no temperature) that is usually 35-45 minutes. Add the tomato and pepper topping for the last 10-15 minutes rather than baking a further twenty.
- "As directed in the last recipe"The method being cross-referenced is not reproduced here. Bake uncovered in a moderate oven, around 375F, basting with the pan fat.
- ChampignonsThe recipe's own phrasing ("fresh mushrooms, if you can get them; if not") indicates a preserved product, i.e. the bottled or canned mushrooms sold as the fallback when fresh were unavailable. Fresh cremini or button mushrooms are now the easier option; if you use canned, drain and pat them dry or the stuffing will weep.
- Salt porkSalt pork varies considerably in saltiness. If yours is heavily cured, blanch the slices in simmering water for two minutes before using, or the gravy will taste over-salted.
- The marinadeNo time is given. Thirty minutes to an hour in oil and vinegar is enough; longer and the acid begins to firm and whiten the surface of the flesh.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is essentially beurre manie: soft butter worked with flour, dropped into the strained liquid and whisked. It thickens quickly, which suits the brief boil the recipe calls for.
- Onion juice"2 of onion juice" means two teaspoons, matching the teaspoon of sugar just before it. Grate a peeled onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or use a teaspoon of very finely grated shallot.
- MuskalongeAn older spelling of muskellunge, the large freshwater pike. It was commercially caught in the nineteenth century but is managed as a game fish today and not sold; walleye, pike or a firm whitefish fillet stands in for it here.
- YieldA 3-4 lb whole fish prepared this way serves four generously, with enough gravy for the boat.