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Fish a La Creme
Boil a firm fish, remove the bones, pick it to pieces. Mix one pint cream or milk with two tablespoonfuls flour, one onion, one-half pound butter (or less), and salt.
Set it on the fire and stir until it is as thick as custard. Fill a baking dish alternately with fish, cracker, and cream. Bake for thirty minutes, use four crackers.--Mrs. W. C. R.
A plain fish gratin of the sort that turned Sunday's boiled fish into Monday's supper. Two things need attention: the butter, and the oven temperature the recipe never gives.
- The butter is out of proportionHalf a pound of butter to one pint of milk and two tablespoons of flour will break into grease long before the sauce thickens. The parenthetical "or less" is doing real work here; 2 to 3 tablespoons is the right order of magnitude for a pint of white sauce, and the flour should be cooked in it briefly before the liquid goes in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; cookstoves of the period generally had no thermometer, and heat was judged by hand and eye. A dish of already-cooked fish and hot sauce only needs to set and brown: 350F for the stated thirty minutes, or 375F if you want more colour on top.
- "As thick as custard"That means stirred custard, not baked — the sauce should coat the spoon and hold a drawn line, not stand up. It will tighten further in the oven, so stop while it still pours.
- The onionThe recipe says only "one onion." It is probably meant to flavour the milk rather than be eaten in chunks; halving it, simmering it in the milk and lifting it out before the sauce is layered is the safest reading.
- CrackersNineteenth-century crackers were hard and dry and carried little or no salt; the closest today is a plain water biscuit or unsalted saltine, coarsely broken. "Use four crackers" appears to be the total for the layering; commercial crackers now carry enough salt that the sauce needs less.
- The fish"A firm fish" points to a lean white fish that flakes in large pieces; cod, haddock, rockfish or drum would all answer. Oily fish such as mackerel or salmon will overwhelm the cream. Poach it just to opaque, since it cooks a second time in the oven.
- YieldNo quantity of fish is given. A pint of sauce will carry roughly a pound and a half of cooked fish, which would fill about a 1½-quart dish and serve four as a main course, six as part of a larger meal.
Fish à la crème belongs to the long American habit of dressing plain boiled fish in a French-sounding name and a white sauce — the same impulse behind creamed chicken, lobster Newburg and the endless "scallops" of the period. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of such dishes signed only with initials, and the format matters: these were recipes written by cooks for cooks who already knew the basics, and no oven temperature and no quantity of fish appear. Crackers served as a binder and topping in a period when bread was baked at home and stale loaves were not always to hand, while barrelled crackers kept well; the layered cracker-and-cream casserole was a reliable way to stretch leftover fish into a second meal without it tasting like leftovers.