Home › Fish › Creamed Fish in Pepper Shells
Creamed Fish in Pepper Shells
Any cooked fish may be used as the foundation. The peppers give their pleasant seasoning to the filling as well as make a very dainty case.
Cut the peppers lengthwise and remove the seeds. Boil the shells a little before filling with the creamed fish. In making the creamed fish remember that if you stir the cream sauce over the yolk of an egg it will add richness and flavor to the dish.
Fried Smelts, Lemon Sauce Two moderate sized smelts for each person.
Wash, clean and dry the fish. Dip each one into a little flour, to which has been added seasoning of salt and pepper. Brush over with beaten egg, then roll in fine white bread crumbs.
Fry for about five minutes in plenty of smoking hot fat. Drain and serve very hot with lemon sauce. Heat 3 heaping tablespoonfuls of butter and beat it to a cream. Whip into it the strained juice of 2 small lemons and a generous tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley. It should be a light green cream when done. Fill with this mixture the halves of lemons from which all the pulp and inner skin have been scraped, and garnish the dish of smelts with them, serving one of the " cups" with each portion of fish.
Two separate dishes run together on one page: creamed fish baked in green pepper halves, and fried smelts with a lemon-parsley butter. Both assume a cook who already knows how to build a white sauce, since neither gives quantities for it.
- The cream sauce is left to youNothing here specifies proportions. A workable medium sauce is 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk or light cream, cooked until it coats a spoon, then folded with 1 1/2 to 2 cups flaked cooked fish. That fills four to six pepper halves.
- The egg yolk trick, done right"Stir the cream sauce over the yolk" means tempering: beat the yolk in a bowl, pour in a ladle of hot sauce while whisking, then return it all to the pan off the heat. Add the yolk to the pan directly and over heat and you get scrambled threads in the sauce.
- Parboil the shells brieflyThree to four minutes in boiling salted water is enough to soften the peppers so they finish in the same time as the filling. Longer and they collapse when handled. Drain them cut side down before filling.
- Finishing the peppersThe recipe stops at "filling" and says nothing about what happens next. If you want them hot through and lightly coloured, a moderate oven for about twenty minutes will do it, buttered crumbs on top if you want a crust, in a dish snug enough to keep them upright.
- Smelts as sold todayWhole smelts come cleaned or nearly so; slit the belly, remove the viscera, and leave heads and tails on, since the recipe asks only that you "wash, clean and dry the fish." Rainbow smelt commonly run seven to nine inches, market fish often smaller, so "two moderate sized" per person is a light course rather than a main.
- "Smoking hot fat"Read that as 365-375F, deep enough to float the fish. Five minutes is right for smelts of that size; crowd the pan and the temperature drops, the crumbs soak, and they take longer than they should.
- The lemon sauce is a compound butterThree heaping tablespoons of butter is roughly 2 ounces. Have it soft, not melted, or the lemon juice will not emulsify and the mixture separates. Two small lemons is a lot of acid for that much butter; add the juice gradually and stop when it tastes right.
- Lemon cupsHalve the lemons crosswise, juice them, then scrape out membrane with a spoon so the shell stands as a cup. Chill the filled cups until service so the butter holds its shape against the hot fish.
Serving a creamed mixture in a hollowed vegetable, fruit or paper case was a common habit of American cooking between roughly 1890 and 1920, when domestic-science writers prized dishes that looked composed and portioned on the plate. Green pepper shells, tomato cases, scooped lemons and scallop shells all did the same work: they turned yesterday's cooked fish into something that read as a course rather than a leftover. Smelts belong to the same economy from the other direction. They were a cheap, seasonal fish sold by the pound in Northeastern markets, eaten whole and fried in numbers, and the lemon-parsley butter filled into a scraped lemon half is a thrifty cook borrowing the plating conventions of the hotel dining room without the cost of one.