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Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish: Black
FILLETS OF BLACK BASS, WITH BREAD STUFFING Remove the head of the fish; with a sharp-pointed knife cut through the entire length of the fish underneath, and thus empty the contents; cut the fish down the entire length of the back on both sides of the fins and take out this strip; loosen the skin all around the edge on one side of the fish, rub the fingers of the right hand in salt, -- if they are damp the salt will stick to them, -- then pull the skin from the side of the fish made ready. If at any place it does not separate from the flesh, push it with the knife. Remove the skin from the other side in the same way. Then commencing at the top push and scrape the flesh from the bones, keeping the flesh on each side as whole as possible. Wash and break up the bones, and put them in a saucepan over the fire, with cold water to cover; add two slices of onion, four of carrot and a sprig of parsley and let simmer an hour or longer. Wash the two fillets of fish and dry them on a cloth. Put some bits of butter (about a tablespoonful) in an earthen baking dish; on these lay a slice of the bass, put on this a layer of bread dressing, and above this the other fillet of fish; dot it with bits of butter, or strips of salt pork, and set into a hot oven. Bake about twenty-five minutes, reducing the heat after five or six minutes. Baste with some of the fish broth, in which a little butter has been melted, every six minutes. Just before the fish is baked, spread half a cup of cracker crumbs mixed with three level tablespoonfuls of melted butter over the top of the fish and return to the oven, to brown the crumbs. For the sauce melt two tablespoonfuls of butter; in it cook two level tablespoonfuls of flour and one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and paprika, then add three-fourths a cup of fish stock and one-fourth a cup of cream. Stir until boiling, then beat in a tablespoonful of butter. Serve cucumbers, French pickle or Philadelphia Relish at the same time. Two slices of halibut may be cooked in the same way. BREAD STUFFING FOR BLACK BASS OR OTHER FISH Pass enough bread, freed from crust, through a colander to fill a cup; mix with this two, crushed, sage leaves, a bit of thyme or sweet marjoram, one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and pepper and one-third a cup of melted butter.
A whole-fish filleting lesson with a stuffing, a basting broth and a cream sauce all folded into one entry. Read it as four short operations rather than one long paragraph, and start the bone stock before you touch the oven.
- Get the fishBlack bass here means the freshwater smallmouth or largemouth bass, a sport fish that is not sold commercially in most of the United States today. Any firm-fleshed fish of about 2 to 3 lb works, and the recipe itself offers halibut steaks as a substitute.
- Cut down the stock timeModern practice generally favours a short simmer for fish bones; twenty to thirty minutes at a bare simmer extracts most of what is useful. Strain and skim before using it to baste and to build the sauce.
- "A hot oven"The book gives no figures. A hot oven of this period is usually read as roughly 425F to 450F; reduce after the first five or six minutes as instructed, to something in the region of 350F. The initial heat sets the outside of the stacked fillets so the sandwich holds together.
- Watch the internal temperature, not the clockTwenty-five minutes assumes a thick double layer of fillet with stuffing between. Two thin fillets will be done in half that. Pull it at 135F to 140F at the centre of the fish, not of the stuffing.
- The salt trick worksDamp fingers rubbed in salt genuinely do grip fish skin, exactly as the recipe describes. The rest of the filleting is standard practice with a flexible knife.
- Stuffing measuresBread "passed through a colander" means soft crumbs pushed through to break them up, one cup loosely packed. One-third cup melted butter to one cup of crumbs is very rich by modern taste; half that still binds. The recipe does not say whether the sage leaves are fresh or dried; if fresh, two crushed leaves are somewhere around an eighth to a quarter teaspoon dried.
- The sauceA fish veloute finished with cream: a two-tablespoon roux cooked without colouring, then three-quarters cup stock and a quarter cup cream. The recipe beats in the final tablespoon of butter once the sauce has boiled; keeping it off the boil after that helps it stay emulsified.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe states no yield; a 2 to 3 lb fish would feed two or three. Serve the sauce alongside rather than poured over the browned crumbs. Philadelphia Relish is a raw chopped cabbage and pepper relish; a sharp cucumber pickle serves the same purpose.
This comes from a chapter in which fish is filed under "true proteids" -- a habit of the American domestic-science movement, which arranged cookbooks by nutritional class rather than by course. The dish itself belongs to the inland American table: black bass is a freshwater game fish of lakes and rivers, and such a fish was as likely to arrive from an angler as to be bought, which is why the recipe begins with the whole fish, head on, rather than with a purchased fillet. Stuffing a fish between two boned fillets and basting it with a broth made from its own bones is thrifty rather than fancy, the same logic that puts salt pork strips on top in place of butter. Finishing a baked fish with buttered cracker crumbs is often associated with New England, and cracker crumbs remained a standard American binder and topping.