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Planked Whitefish
Clean and bone fish weighing 4 lbs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and rub with butter or margarine. Grease plank and place fish on it. Bake in moderate oven (375 degrees) for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and make a mashed potato border around edge of plank. Between edge of fish and potato border place baked stuffed tomatoes, green beans and flowers of cauliflower previously prepared and cooked. Brown potatoes in hot oven. Remove from oven, garnish with parsley and lemon. Cover round of cauliflower with drawn butter sauce.
A planked dinner is a whole meal cooked and served on one board, so the timing hinges on having every vegetable finished before the fish comes out of the oven. The recipe gives its own oven temperature, which is unusually helpful for its era.
- Prepare the plank firstA service plank is untreated hardwood, commonly oak, and usually around an inch thick. Period advice is to rub a new plank with oil and heat it slowly in a low oven before its first use, which is said to reduce the risk of cracking or scorching in a long bake.
- Everything else is cooked in advanceThe stuffed tomatoes, beans and cauliflower are described as "previously prepared and cooked." Have them hot and ready; they only go on the plank for the final browning, which is a matter of five to eight minutes under high heat or a broiler.
- Oven temperatures375F for the fish, as stated. The recipe does not define its 'hot oven' for browning the potatoes; period scales generally put that around 400-450F. A broiler with the plank on a baking sheet will do the same job.
- The fishA 4 lb whole whitefish, cleaned and boned, runs 30 to 40 minutes at 375F, but judge it by the flesh at the thickest part rather than the clock; cook to 145F at the thickest point. The butter rub helps keep the surface from drying over a 40-minute bake.
- Mashed potato borderThe potatoes need to be stiff and dry or the border will slump and will not brown; they can be piped with a large star tube or shaped with a spoon while hot. Something in the region of 2 lb of potatoes will make a border for a plank this size.
- Drawn butter sauceIn American cookbooks of this period this is not clarified butter but a light sauce of butter, flour and hot water or fish stock, seasoned with lemon. Expect about a cup for the cauliflower.
- ServingThe plank is set on a metal tray or a folded cloth at the table and is very hot. It serves four to six as a whole dinner.