Turban of Fish
2 1/2 cups cold flaked fish (cod, haddock, halibut, or cusk) 1 1/2 cups milk 1 slice onion Blade of mace Sprig of parsley 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper Lemon juice Yolks 2 eggs 2/3 cup buttered cracker crumbs Scald milk with onion, mace, and parsley; remove season mgs. Melt butter, add flour, salt, pepper, and gradually the milk; then add eggs, slightly beaten. Put a layer of fish on buttered dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add a few drops of lemon juice. Cover with sauce, continuing until fish and sauce are used, shaping in pyramid form. Cover with crumbs, and bake in hot oven until crumbs are brown.
A way of using up cooked fish: a thick, mace-scented white sauce enriched with egg yolks, layered with flakes of fish and browned under crumbs. The sauce is the whole dish, so make it properly.
- Cook the fish firstThe recipe assumes 2 1/2 cups of cold cooked fish already flaked, roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb raw. Poach or bake fillets, cool, and pull them apart in large flakes, discarding skin and bones.
- CuskA cod relative once common on New England fish counters and now rarely sold. Any firm white fish works: cod, haddock, halibut, pollock, or hake.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, and a "blade" is one dried piece, removed after infusing. About 1/8 teaspoon ground mace stirred into the finished sauce gives a similar effect, though the flavour is blunter.
- Temper the yolksTwo yolks beaten straight into hot sauce will scramble in threads. Whisk a few spoonfuls of the hot sauce into the yolks first, return the mixture to the pan off the heat, and do not let it boil afterwards.
- Hot ovenRead this as 425F. The dish is already cooked through, so the oven is only setting the sauce and colouring the crumbs — 15 to 20 minutes, and watch the top rather than the clock.
- Buttered cracker crumbsCrush plain soda or water crackers to coarse crumbs and toss with melted butter; 2/3 cup of crumbs will take roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons. Panko tossed with butter behaves the same way.
- The pyramidDespite the name, no ring mould is involved. Build the layers up toward the centre in a shallow buttered baking dish so the finished mound holds its shape when cut, and keep the sauce thick enough to support it.
- YieldServes four as a main course with potatoes or peas, or six as a first course.
"Turban" in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookery meant a dish built up in a domed or ringed shape, a usage taken from French cookery, where a turban of fish was typically baked in a circular mould and turned out. Recipes of this kind in the American domestic-science books reduce the idea to what appears here: a shape suggested by layering rather than by a mould, and a dish whose real purpose is the thrifty use of cold cooked fish. Milk scalded with mace and a slice of onion was a common flavouring for fish sauces of the period, and the egg yolks here thicken and enrich the sauce.