Scalloped Fish
Remove the skin and bones from any cold fish, and then break it apart in little flakes. Crumb smoothly, some stale bread, and chop fine some parsley. Butter a baking dish, put in a layer of the fish, then a sprinkling of crumbs and parsley, dust with salt and pepper, and put little bits of butter all over it, now another layer of fish, and so continue until the dish is full, having the last layer crumbs. Now pour over it slowly and carefully, sufficient milk to moisten, and stand aside for ten minutes. Bake in a quick oven until a nice brown.
FISH en VINAIGRETTE Boil the fish as directed, take from the fire and stand aside to cool. When cold, place it in the centre of a large dish. Chop fine the yolks of two hard boiled eggs, then chop the whites, also two tablespoonfuls of parsley. Put a string of the yolks on both sides of the fish, next to that a string of the whites, next a string of capers, and sprinkle over the whole the chopped parsley. Split a lemon in two lengthwise, then split again into quarters, then again into eighths and sixteenths, resembling the carpels of oranges. eight pieces on each side of the dish, next to the capers. Put a row of water-cress on the top of the fish, with a large bunch in its mouth. Serve with Bearnaise or Vinaigrette Sauce in a boat.
Place
Two dishes run together here: a baked scallop of leftover cooked fish, and a cold garnished whole fish. Both assume you already have cooked fish on hand, which is the point of a hot-weather book.
- Quick ovenProbably around 400-425F. At that heat a dish about 2 inches deep should brown on top and heat through in roughly 20-25 minutes; the fish is already cooked, so you are only setting the milk and colouring the crumbs.
- Quantities, since none are givenAbout 1 lb of flaked cooked fish, 1 to 1 1/2 cups of fresh crumbs from stale bread, 2 tablespoons parsley, 2 tablespoons butter in bits and roughly 3/4 cup milk fills a 1 1/2-quart dish and serves four.
- The ten-minute standThis is the hinge. The crumbs must drink the milk before the dish goes in, or the milk runs to the bottom and the top layer scorches dry. Pour slowly at the edge and let it sit.
- Crumbs"Crumb smoothly, some stale bread" means soft crumbs grated or rubbed from a day-old loaf, not dry sandy packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid and bake to grit.
- Reheating cooked fishLeftover fish that has been out of refrigeration in warm weather should not be used. Bring the finished dish to 165F at the centre; the quick oven does this well within the browning time.
- Fish en vinaigretteThe garnish instructions are plainly garbled in the original setting: the lemon sentence breaks off and the passage ends mid-thought. "Eight pieces on each side" seems to refer to the lemon sixteenths laid outside the row of capers. A whole boiled fish, chilled, is what this is built on; something in the 3-4 lb range would suit the presentation.
- The headA bunch of watercress in the fish's mouth requires the head left on, which means poaching whole rather than in fillets. Most fishmongers will gut and scale a whole fish and leave the head if asked.
- SauceVinaigrette here is the classic cold sauce of oil, vinegar, capers, parsley and shallot, not a modern salad dressing; Bearnaise is served barely warm, which is awkward beside a cold fish and best made at the last minute.
Scalloped dishes -- anything layered with buttered crumbs and baked -- were a common American answer to yesterday's fish, oysters or potatoes, and the name is generally traced to the scallop shells such mixtures were once baked and served in. Books of "hot weather dishes" appeared from the later nineteenth century onward, before domestic refrigeration was general: the aim was to keep the range cold, so most of the work here is done in advance and either briefly finished in a hot oven or served outright as a cold dressed fish. The vinaigrette presentation, with its concentric strings of chopped egg yolk, white, capers and parsley and a fanned lemon, belongs to the same period's taste for elaborate cold buffet work, borrowed from professional French kitchen practice.