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To Stew Rock-Fish
Take a rock, clean and season with parsley, sweet marjoram, onions, one-half pint water, salt to taste, one pint Port wine, one-half pound butter, and a little flour. Put them in a dish, and set in a stewpan. One hour is sufficient for cooking.--Mrs. J. T.
A whole striped bass braised in Port and butter, with the dish set inside a stewpan of water so the fish poaches gently rather than boils. The proportions are generous and the timing belongs to a much larger fish than most cooks buy today.
- What a "rock" isRock or rock-fish in Virginia means striped bass, Morone saxatilis, not the Pacific rockfish sold under that name on the West Coast today. The recipe gives no weight; a whole cleaned striper of 3-5 lb is a workable modern size, and black sea bass, redfish or a whole branzino all behave similarly.
- The hour is for a big fishAn hour of stewing will reduce a modern 2-3 lb fillet or small whole fish to threads. Cooks aiming for a just-set texture pull striped bass at around 130-135F at the thickest part, though the FDA's recommended safe temperature for fish is 145F; on either reading a whole 4 lb fish in a gentle braise wants roughly 30-40 minutes and fillets 10-12. The full hour suggests a considerably larger fish than most cooks buy today.
- "Put them in a dish, and set in a stewpan"The dish goes inside a second pan rather than over the fire directly; the likeliest reading is a water bath, though the recipe does not actually say the stewpan holds water. A covered casserole in a 325F oven, or a heatproof dish set in a wide pan of barely simmering water, reproduces the same slow, even heat and keeps the fish from breaking up.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint is one cup, one pint is two cups, half a pound of butter is two sticks. Two cups of Port and half a pound of butter is enough sauce for a very large fish; scale both down by half or more for a 3 lb one, or the fish will swim rather than braise.
- Which PortPort in this period meant a sweet fortified red, and two cups of a modern ruby Port will read as very sweet against fish. An aged tawny is less obviously sweet, and cutting the Port with an equal part of dry red wine or fish stock gives the depth without the syrup.
- "A little flour"The flour is there to bind the wine and butter into a sauce, and it is easiest handled off the fish: work equal weights of flour and softened butter into a paste, then whisk it into the strained cooking liquor and simmer a minute or two. Flour dusted straight into the dish tends to sit in lumps under the fish.
- SeasoningParsley, sweet marjoram and onions go in as aromatics rather than as a measured mixture. A handful of parsley stems, a few marjoram sprigs and one sliced onion is a fair reading; marjoram is easily replaced with oregano at about half the quantity, as it is the more assertive herb.
- ServingA 4 lb whole fish serves four to six. Lift it whole onto a warm platter, strain and finish the sauce, and serve with rice or boiled potatoes to take the wine and butter.
Rock-fish, the striped bass of the Chesapeake and its tributaries, was one of the defining foods of Tidewater Virginia; Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), which Marion Cabell Tyree assembled from contributions by some 250 Virginia housewives, carries several rock-fish recipes side by side, each signed as this one is, with a name or initials — here, \"Mrs. J. T.\" The method here — a sealed dish set inside a pan of water — is an old technique for cooking delicate flesh over an open hearth, where direct heat was hard to moderate and the water jacket did the regulating. The Port is characteristic of the period's better Southern cooking: it turns up in fish sauces, terrapin and game dishes throughout the book, and fortified wine is often said to have kept well in a warm climate. Recipes of this kind, gathered after the Civil War, were often presented as preserving an older domestic style that contributors felt was slipping away.