Baked Fish
Have the fish opened and drawn through the gills. Make a stuffing with 1 cupful of bread crumbs, 1 tablespoonful of melted butter, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and 1 tablespoonful of chopped pickle. Fill the fish. Cut gashes two inches apart on the sides, lay in each a strip of fat salt pork. Dust over all salt and pepper. Lay in a pan on some slices of salt pork. Place in a quick oven and baste once or twice with butter and water. When the flesh begins to separate from the bones it is doneabout an hour will be necessary for a five pound fish. Dish, garnishing with parsley and lemon.
A whole stuffed fish, larded with salt pork in the older New England manner. Almost everything here still works; the timing and the oven need translating.
- "Quick oven"Roughly 400-450F. At that heat a five-pound stuffed fish may not need the full hour the recipe allows; start checking at around 45 minutes and judge by the flesh.
- Judging doneness"Flesh begins to separate from the bones" is a reliable visual cue, but an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the flesh, not the stuffing, should read 145F. Check the stuffing separately; bread stuffing packed into a body cavity should reach 165F.
- "Drawn through the gills"Gutting through the gill opening rather than slitting the belly, so the cavity stays closed and holds stuffing. Any fishmonger will do it if asked; otherwise a belly-slit fish stuffed and closed with skewers or a few stitches of kitchen twine works the same.
- Which fishThe recipe does not name a fish; a round whole fish of about five pounds — bluefish, cod, haddock, striped bass — suits the method. A whole fish that size may need ordering ahead; two smaller fish of two to three pounds each, baked side by side, behave the same way and will be done considerably sooner, so start checking early.
- Fat salt porkNot bacon. Salt pork is salt-cured but unsmoked belly or fatback, still sold in the pork section of many supermarkets. Cut into thin batons for the gashes and thin slices for the pan. Blanching it briefly first keeps the dish from going too salty, and if you substitute unsmoked pancetta, cut back the salt dusting.
- Chopped pickleA cucumber pickle, and in a book of this period more likely a sour or mixed pickle than a sweet gherkin. One tablespoon in a cup of crumbs is there for acidity against the pork fat; a sharp dill pickle or a spoonful of capers gives the same effect.
- Stuffing quantityOne cup of crumbs is a light filling for a five-pound fish and will look sparse. Double it if you want the cavity full, and moisten with a little more butter or stock — dry crumbs in a lean fish stay dry.
- BastingButter and water spooned over is a period substitute for a fat pan sauce. It keeps the skin from parching under high heat; two or three bastings is plenty, and the pork slices underneath do most of the work.
- YieldA five-pound whole fish serves six to eight once the head, tail and frame are accounted for.
Baking a whole fish stuffed with seasoned crumbs and larded with salt pork appears in nineteenth-century New England collections with very little variation. The technique answers two problems at once: most cheap whole fish are lean, so the pork supplies the fat that basting alone cannot, and the crumb stuffing stretches the fish across more plates. That economy is part of its appeal — a large whole fish bought entire was among the cheapest protein available in a port city, and the cook was expected to know what to do with the head, bones and skin.