Home › Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish › Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish: Fresh
Cooking of True Proteids Continued: Fish: Fresh
FRESH FISH EN CASSEROLE Any fish from which pieces about three inches square may be taken can be used for this dish. Salmon, cod, haddock and halibut are all available in most markets. Remove all skin and bone from the fish; put these over the fire in cold water to cover and let simmer. Meanwhile peel four small onions, cover with cold water and let boil ten minutes, then drain and add to the saucepan of fish trimmings to cook for an hour, or until nearly tender. Peel four potatoes and cut them in quarters, lengthwise. Cover with boiling water and let boil three minutes, then drain, rinse in cold water and drain again. Put the pieces of fish, of which there should be a pound or more, into the casserole, add the onions and the potatoes, a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of black pepper and strain the fish broth over the whole. A carrot, cut in quarters or slices, according to size, cooked half and hour and drained, may also be added. Cover and let cook half an hour.
FRESH FISH - BALLS With a silver fork pick remnants of cooked fish into bits and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pass through a vegetable ricer a few hot, boiled potatoes; to those add a little fish sauce, if at hand, or cream or butter, also salt and pepper, and beat as for mashed potato. To the fish add just enough of the hot potato to hold the fish together. Shape the mixture into balls; roll these in fine crumbs, then cover them with an egg, beaten and diluted with its bulk of milk or water, and again roll them in crumbs. Fry in deep fat; serve with Philadelphia relish or tomato catsup.
Two related dishes: a fish and potato braise built on a quick stock from the trimmings, and a croquette made from the leftovers of either. Both come from a book scaled for a household of two.
- "En casserole" means the vesselIn 1909 a casserole was a lidded earthenware or heavy metal pot used on the stovetop as often as in the oven, not the shallow baked dish the word now suggests. A Dutch oven or heavy lidded saucepan does exactly what is intended here.
- The hinge: the fish goes in last, brieflyThirty minutes of covered cooking will reduce three-inch pieces of cod or haddock to threads. The point of all the pre-boiling is that the onions, carrots and potatoes arrive nearly cooked; get the vegetables and broth hot and tender first, then add the fish and give it 8 to 12 minutes until it just flakes.
- The trimmings stockSkin and bones simmered in cold water for an hour make a light fish broth. Modern practice usually caps fish stock at 20 to 30 minutes, after which the bones can turn it bitter. Ask the fishmonger for the frames if you buy fillets.
- Why the vegetables are parboiled and drainedBoiling the onions ten minutes and discarding the water strips their sulphurous edge; rinsing the potatoes after three minutes washes off surface starch so the broth stays clear rather than thickening. Neither step is decorative.
- Salmon and halibut behave differentlySalmon and halibut are firmer than cod or haddock and will hold their shape better, but halibut in particular goes chalky if pushed past done. Pull it off the heat while the centre is still barely translucent.
- Fish balls: proportion is everythingThe instruction to add "just enough" hot potato to bind is the whole recipe. Roughly two parts flaked fish to one part riced potato gives a ball that holds; more potato and you are frying mashed potato.
- Breading and fryingCrumb, then egg wash thinned with an equal volume of milk, then crumb again — the double coat is what keeps a soft interior from bursting. Fry at 375F until deep gold, three to four minutes, and drain on a rack rather than paper.
- Philadelphia relishA period condiment, usually described as shredded cabbage and celery in a spiced vinegar dressing, though accounts of it vary. Any sharp mustard-based relish or a tartar sauce serves the same purpose.
- YieldA pound of fish with four potatoes and four onions makes a dish for two. The fish-ball recipe calls for 'remnants of cooked fish,' so leftovers from this or any other cooked fish can be used, though the book does not say the two were meant to be made in sequence.
This pair sits in a chapter organised around the chemistry of "true proteids" — the language of the domestic science movement, which by 1909 had recast cookery books as applied nutrition lessons. The braise is a plain northern fish stew of the kind found around the North Atlantic under many names, and its logic is thrift: the skin and bones that a fishmonger would discard become the cooking liquid, so nothing bought is wasted. Fish balls in particular were a fixture of American breakfast tables, especially in New England, where salt cod versions long predated the fresh-fish variant given here; the potato acts as both binder and extender. The instruction to pick the fish apart "with a silver fork" is a survival of an older kitchen belief that ordinary steel discoloured fish and gave it a metallic taste — traditionally explained as a problem with the carbon-steel cutlery of the period, and in any case irrelevant with stainless.