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To Bake a Sheep's-Head
Put two tablespoonfuls butter and two tablespoonfuls lard in a skillet; also, with that, two tablespoonfuls flour, a little parsley, one pint boiling water, a little wine, catsup, salt, and cayenne pepper. Boil a few minutes; then take four eggs, half a pint cream or butter; beat well together. Lay the fish in a large deep dish, pour gravy from skillet over it; spread butter over top of fish. The bottom of the quite hot, top slow.--Miss. E. W.
A whole baked fish with an enriched brown sauce, written in the compressed shorthand of a contributor who assumed the reader had done it before. The sauce is the whole job; the fish only needs to be cooked through.
- What the fish isSheep's-head here is sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus), a porgy relative of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts named for its blunt profile and human-looking teeth, not a sheep's head. The recipe never states a size; a whole scaled and gutted fish is assumed, and black drum, porgy or striped bass stands in well.
- The hinge: do not boil the egg liaisonThe hinge: the egg liaison -- The recipe only says to beat four eggs with the cream and does not say when they join the gravy. Treated as a liaison they should not be boiled, or they scramble: whisk a ladle of the hot sauce into the eggs first, then stir that back in.
- "Half a pint cream or butter"A pint is 2 cups, so this reads as 1 cup. A cup of cream with four eggs makes a sensible custard-thickened sauce; a cup of butter with them does not, and the alternative is likely a copying slip. Use the cream.
- CatsupCatsup at this date could mean mushroom, walnut or tomato, used as a savoury seasoning; period versions were generally sharper and less sweet than the modern bottled condiment. A tablespoon of mushroom ketchup, or Worcestershire, gives a plausible effect.
- The oven direction"The bottom of the quite hot, top slow" is garbled but means strong heat from below and gentle heat above, the normal control of a wood range or a covered pot with coals. In a modern oven, bake at 375F on a low rack.
- DonenessThe recipe gives neither size nor time. A whole fish of around 4 lb will need roughly 40 minutes at 375F; the flesh should flake at the backbone (USDA advises 145F at the thickest part). Overbaking dries the fish and the sauce will not rescue it.
- Fat and flourTwo tablespoons each butter and lard with two tablespoons flour makes a very loose roux for a pint of liquid. Cook it a minute or two until it smells nutty before adding the boiling water, and expect a thin gravy that the eggs will finish thickening.
- YieldWith the sauce, a fish of this size serves four to six. The recipe has the fish laid in a large deep dish with the gravy poured over it, so keeping it in one dish avoids losing the sauce in moving the fish.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from hundreds of contributors identified only by initials, is a book of household recipes traded between cooks rather than written for strangers, which is why "Miss E. W." could leave out both the fish and the timing. Sheepshead was a well-regarded market fish along the mid-Atlantic coast in the nineteenth century, prized in the Chesapeake and around New York, where Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn takes its name from the fish; the northern runs thinned by the early twentieth century, and it is now caught mostly in the Gulf and the southern Atlantic. The instruction to keep the bottom heat hot and the top slow belongs to a kitchen with no thermostat, where heat was managed by placing the dish in the oven or under a Dutch-oven lid banked with coals, and the flour gravy is enriched with beaten eggs and cream.