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Fish (When ready lift out the fish)
When ready lift out the fish on to a hot plank. Put some hot mashed potatoes through a forcing bag round the fish, brush with beaten egg, and return to a hot oven to brown the potatoes. Fill up the space between the fish and potatoes with hot vegetables. Decorate with pieces of cooked cucumber, which have the centers removed and filled with cooked and seasoned peas.
This is the finishing half of a planked fish, picking up after the fish has cooked. What follows assumes a whole fish already baked or broiled and a plank hot enough to keep it that way.
- The plankThe recipe assumes a cooking plank, though it specifies nothing about it. Hardwood such as oak, maple or hickory was usual, heated before the fish goes on it. Never use treated, glued or resinous softwood lumber, and season a new plank with oil so it does not split.
- "A hot oven"Roughly 400-450F in period usage. The dish is only in long enough to colour the potato ridges, and the plank and its contents are already hot.
- Forcing bagA piping bag. Use a large star tube and pipe the border while the potato is still hot; cooled mashed potato tears and will not hold ridges.
- The potato borderThe recipe asks only for hot mashed potato, but it must be stiff and dry enough to hold piped ridges; plain wet mash slumps into the fish. A border of this kind is close to the duchesse potato of French service, which is enriched with egg yolk and butter.
- Brush with beaten eggThe recipe specifies only beaten egg. This is what gives the gloss and the brown edges; without it the piping stays pale.
- Cucumber cupsCut cucumber into short lengths and hollow the centres, then cook briefly so they still hold their shape. Overcooked they collapse under the peas.
- Order of workEverything except the potato must be fully cooked and hot before assembly. The oven stage browns; it does not cook. Have the peas, vegetables and cucumber standing in hot water and drain them at the last moment.
- ServingSet the plank on a wooden board or folded cloth at table; it comes out of the oven far hotter than a platter and will scorch a cloth directly.
Planked fish was a fixture of American hotel and club cooking from the 1880s through the 1920s, and the technique is generally traced to Native American practice along the Atlantic rivers, where shad was fastened to a split board and set at an angle before a fire. By the time this recipe was compiled, the plank had moved indoors to the oven and the dish had become chiefly a matter of presentation: the fish itself is barely mentioned here, while the piped potato border, the egg glaze and the cucumber cups filled with peas take up the whole entry. That ratio is the period speaking. Garnishing on this scale came out of the professional kitchen from French service.