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Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish: Baked
ROLLED FILLETS OF BASS BAKED Remove the flesh from the bass in two fillets (as is described in the preceding recipe). Put the fillets in a dish, squeeze over them the juice of half a lemon, put slices of onion between, and set them aside in a cool place until ready to cook. Then roll the fillets, separately and loosely; into turban shapes, put bits of salt pork over them, and set to cook in a hot oven. After four or five minutes baste with salt pork fat and reduce the heat. Let cook about twenty minutes, basting five times. Leave two tablespoonfuls of the fat in the pan after the fish has been taken out; add to this two tablespoonfuls of flour and one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and pepper, and cook until frothy, then add a cup of broth made from the bones, bits of onion, parsley and a few slices of carrot, and cook until boiling. Add two tablespoonfuls of capers or fine-chopped cucumber pickles. Serve in a fish boat or bowl.
FISH BAKED IN CREAM OR MILK A slice of halibut or fillets of bass or pickerel are particularly good baked and basted during the baking with cream or milk. Use an earthen baking dish. A particularly good dish, (sarraguemines ware), brown outside and white inside, is shown in the illustration of "Rolled Fillets of Black Bass." Rub over the bottom of the dish with butter; lay in the fish, put in a few thin slices of onion and pour in thin cream (milk will do) to nearly cover the fish. Let cook about fifteen minutes. Baste once or twice with the cream. Salt when nearly cooked. Do not have the oven too hot.
CREAMED FISH IN SHELLS, POTATO BORDER (Luncheon or Supper, or course at Dinner) Cook a pound of fresh haddock in a cup of water, to which a slice of onion and a tablespoonful of lemon juice have been added. Remove from the liquid, when the flesh separates easily from the bones, or in about ten minutes. Discard the skin and bones, and separate the fish into flakes. Use the liquid in which the fish was cooked, with one-fourth the measure of cream, in making a cup of white sauce. Allow a cup of sauce for each generous cup of the fish. Mix part of the sauce with the fish, and dispose it in buttered scallop shells. Spread a little more sauce over the top, then pipe mashed potatoes around the edge of the shells. Brush the potato with the yolk of an egg, beaten and mixed with a tablespoonful of milk, and set the shells in the oven to brown the edges of the potato. Serve at once with a slice of hard-cooked egg or a hot poached egg in the center of each.
Brushing the potato with the beaten yolk of egg is used mainly with an eye to the appearance of the dish; thus treated the potato will brown more quickly (yolk of egg is quickly affected by heat), but of course it may be omitted. This dish need not necessarily be made from fish cooked for the purpose. It is a particularly good way in which to use "left over fish." FRESH CODFISH, BROILED In ordering the codfish ask the dealer to remove the backbone. Heat the broiler very hot, oil it thoroughly, lay the fish upon it and let cook from fifteen to twenty minutes, the greater part of the time upon the flesh side, but turning several times and basting it with butter. When thoroughly cooked carefully loosen from the broiler and slide on to a hot platter; sprinkle with salt and spread over it the following butter.
RED PEPPER BUTTER Beat one-fourth a cup of butter to a cream; gradually beat into it the pulp from cooked red peppers, scraped from the skin and seeds, to give the color and flavor desired. Finish with a tablespoonful of lemon juice, added a few drops at a time. For the dish shown in the illustration, chili peppers, the length of the finger, were used. These come put up in small bottles, imported from England. They are of good flavor and may be used in preparing anchovy sandwiches or canapes, tomato sauce, rechauffes of meat or fish, or in Philadelphia relish or other recipes, where green peppers are called for. SALMON STEAK, BAKED Select a slice from near the middle of the salmon. Have it cut about three-fourths an inch thick. Such a slice will weight from half to three-quarters of a pound. Butter an agate pan, lay the steak upon it, and pour around about half a cup of boiling water, to which a teaspoonful of lemon juice or vinegar and a scant half teaspoonful of salt have been added. Butter a piece of waxed paper and lay over the fish.
Set the pan directly over the fire and let stand until the water boils, then cook in the oven ten minutes. In the meantime, pare three or four large, round potatoes, and with a French scoop cut from them as many balls as possible. Put these over the fire, in boiling, salted water, to cook till tender. Melt a tablespoonful and a half of butter; in this cook a tablespoonful and a half of flour, then add half a cup of water and the liquid in the fish-pan and let cook until boiling. Set the fish on a platter with the potatoes, drained and rolled in the pan with a tablespoonful of butter and half a teaspoonful of salt. Put two slices of lemon at the base of the fish, and sprinkle the whole with fine-chopped parsley. Serve the sauce in a bowl. FINNAN HADDIE, "BOILED" Select a thick fish. Take half of it. Put flesh side down in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and set to cook on the back of the range. In about half an hour draw to a hotter part of the range, and gradually heat the water to the simmering-point. Let simmer from five to ten minutes, then drain the fish carefully. Serve on a hot platter. Pass at the same time hot, boiled potatoes and egg sauce.
FINNAN HADDIE, DELMONICO STYLE Prepare the fish as above, then separate the flesh into flakes, discarding skin and bones. For each cup of fish prepare a cup of cream sauce; i.e., melt two tablespoonfuls of butter, cook in it two level tablespoonfuls of flour, one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and pepper, and gradually add one cup of milk. Reheat the fish in the sauce. To serve au gratin, put the fish and sauce into a buttered au gratin dish, in alternate layers, having the last layer of sauce. Cover with cracker crumbs (one-third a cup to three tablespoonfuls of butter) mixed with melted butter, and set into a hot oven, to brown the crumbs.
A run of eight fish preparations from a two-person household book, all built on the same small set of skills: a hot oven and frequent basting, a butter-and-flour sauce, and a fish stock made from the frame. A few of the timings reflect a coal range rather than a modern oven.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures. "A hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken as roughly 425-450F, and the instruction to "reduce the heat" after four or five minutes suggests something in the 350-375F range. "Do not have the oven too hot" for the cream-baked fish means a moderate oven -- low enough that the cream does not scorch.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty minutes of basting suited a thick rolled turban of bass in an unreliable oven. Rolled fillets of ordinary thickness may be done in twelve to fifteen minutes. The fifteen to twenty minutes given for broiled cod assumes a thick split fish; a thinner modern cut will need considerably less. Judge by opacity and flake.
- Salt porkThe strips laid over the bass are unsmoked cured fatback, used as a self-basting fat because fish this lean has none of its own. Blanched thick-cut bacon or a brushing of clarified butter does the same work, though bacon brings smoke the original did not intend.
- Agate and sarreguemines wareAn "agate pan" is enamelled steel graniteware; any enamelled or stainless roasting pan serves. Sarreguemines was a French faience, brown-glazed outside and white within, of a kind used for oven-to-table dishes. An earthenware or stoneware baking dish is the equivalent, and unlined reactive metal is best avoided where acid or milk is involved.
- French scoopA melon baller. Three or four large potatoes will yield enough balls for two servings; the trimmings are worth keeping for the mashed potato piping in the shell recipe.
- Finnan haddieCold-smoked, salted haddock; the name is usually traced to Findon in Aberdeenshire, though Findhorn is sometimes claimed instead. Still sold by fishmongers and by mail. The long stand in cold water at the back of the range draws out salt as much as it cooks the fish. Modern smoked haddock is generally milder, so taste and shorten it accordingly. Avoid the bright yellow dyed fillets here.
- Bottled English chilliesThe finger-length peppers put up in small bottles were a preserved product rather than fresh, though the recipe does not say in what form; it asks for the pulp of cooked red peppers scraped from skin and seeds. Roasted and peeled red peppers give the colour; a little chilli or a pinch of cayenne restores the heat. Add the lemon juice a few drops at a time, as directed, or the butter may separate.
- The bone brothThe cup of broth for the bass sauce comes from the frame simmered with onion, parsley and a few slices of carrot; the recipe gives no time, but fish bones need only a short simmer. Start it while the fillets sit with the lemon and onion so it is ready when the fish comes out.
- YieldThe book is written for two. The creamed fish in shells allows a cup of sauce for each generous cup of flaked fish; the number of shells is left to the cook.
These pages come from Janet McKenzie Hill's Cooking for Two, one of a wave of early twentieth-century American books written for the small urban household rather than the large family kitchen; Hill edited the Boston Cooking School Magazine, and the influence of that school's measured, sauce-forward teaching is visible in the way nearly every dish here ends with a roux and a bone broth. The fish chosen are of their moment: black bass and pickerel from inland waters, cod and haddock landed daily in Boston, and finnan haddie shipped in from Scotland. "Delmonico style" is generally understood as a period label for dishes creamed and gratinéed, associated with the New York restaurant's reputation. The note that creamed fish in shells is a good use for leftovers, and the scallop shells themselves, reflect a household economy in which a whole fish bought for one meal was expected to furnish part of another.