Stuffed Smelts
Clean the smelts, wash and wipe dry, and fill them with a stuffing made of bread crumbs and melted butter mixed with an equal amount of tomato, and season with salt and pepper, or with half the amount of tomato catsup. Or add of chopped oysters the same amount as there is of bread crumbs; season with salt and pepper and a very little lemon juice. Sew up the opening, lay them in a buttered baking-pan, and bake ten or fifteen minutes. Serve with maitre d'hotel or parsley butter.
A late-Victorian baked fish dish that assumes you can buy smelts large enough to hold stuffing. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no quantities, so both need supplying.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated. Bake at 400F; ten to fifteen minutes at that heat suits smelts of the size the recipe implies, and the flesh should be opaque at the backbone.
- Size of fish mattersSmelts sold today are often only a few inches long and will hold almost nothing. Look for the largest in the case, or substitute small trout or sardines at four to six ounces each.
- Cleaning and cavity"Clean" here means gutting through the belly and, for stuffing, extending that opening toward the tail. Smelts are traditionally left head-on with the backbone in; some cooks lift the spine out to make more room.
- Proportions for the stuffingNothing is measured. For eight to ten fish, start with 1 cup fresh bread crumbs, 3 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 cup chopped fresh tomato drained of its juice, or about 1/2 cup ketchup in its place. The mixture should hold together, not run.
- The oyster variationEqual parts chopped oysters and crumbs works well, but the oysters must be raw and chopped small. They cook through in the ten to fifteen minutes; longer and they toughen.
- Sewing upA trussing needle and cotton kitchen twine, three or four loose stitches per fish. Wooden toothpicks laced across the opening do the same job and come out faster at the table.
- Maitre d'hotel butterSoftened butter beaten with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled and sliced. Parsley butter is generally the same thing without the lemon.
- YieldFigure three to four stuffed smelts per person as a course, two if the fish are large.