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Trout Baked-in-Paper with Cheese
Clean and wash trout, and stuff with following ingredients well mixed: 1 1/2 cups bread crumbs 1/2 cup cooked mushrooms, finely chopped 1 egg, slightly beaten 2 tablespoons American cheese salt and pepper Moisten with mushroom juice Roll in a dish of American Cheese. Put fish in wax paper. Double paper all around. Put on greased baking sheet. Put in hot oven to bake for 15 minutes. Lift onto warm dish. Garnish with parsley and lemon. Serve with Hollandaise Sauce. Allow 3/4 lb. to each serving.
A 1930s take on fish en papillote, dressed up with processed cheese. Two things need attention before you start: the wrapper and the doneness test.
- Use parchment, not wax paperWaxed paper was the standard kitchen wrap when this was written, but its coating melts and smokes at baking temperature and the paper scorches. Use parchment, or a foil packet, folded and crimped so steam cannot escape.
- "Hot oven"Read that as 425F. At 450F a thin packet risks browning the paper before the fish is through.
- Fifteen minutes is a starting pointFifteen minutes at 425F suits a boned trout of about a pound. A whole stuffed fish at the 3/4 lb per serving the recipe assumes will want 20-25 minutes. The stuffing contains raw egg, so open a packet and check the thickest part of the fish and the center of the stuffing have reached 145F.
- American cheeseIn this period the name could mean either a mild processed loaf cheese or a plain domestic cheddar. Two tablespoons in the stuffing is a small amount; a mild cheddar or a young Colby grated fine gives the same effect with better flavor.
- "Roll in a dish of American Cheese"The instruction is compressed; it most likely means to coat the outside of the stuffed fish in grated cheese before wrapping. A large trout will take roughly half a cup, pressed on so it stays put inside the packet.
- Mushroom juiceThe liquid from cooking the mushrooms, used to bring the crumbs to a stuffing that just holds together. If your mushrooms have given up little liquid, a spoonful of stock or cream does the same job. Do not soak the crumbs; a wet stuffing will not set.
- Stuff looselyBread crumbs bound with egg swell as they cook. Fill the cavity to about three-quarters and close it with a skewer or a few loops of kitchen twine.
- ServingAt 3/4 lb of whole fish per person, one trout of about 1 1/2 lb serves two. Bring the packets to the table closed and slit them there, then finish with the parsley, lemon and Hollandaise.