Fish a La Creme
4 to 6 Pounds of Fish 1 Cup Bread Crumbs Moistened in 1-3 Cup Melted Fat 1-11/2 Pints of Cream Sauce 2 Tablespoons Grated Cheese Make as for scalloped dish, using the bread crumbs to spread over the top after combining them with the grated cheese. Brown in oven. Do not mash the fish or get it too moist.
A baked scalloped dish rather than a sauced fillet: cooked fish flaked into cream sauce, topped with buttered crumbs and cheese, browned in the oven. The original assumes you already know how to build a scalloped dish, so most of what needs saying is the parts it leaves out.
- The hinge: keep the flakes intact and dryThe closing line is the whole technique. Poach or bake the fish first, let it drain and cool enough to handle, and fold it into the sauce with a spatula rather than stirring. Wet fish releases liquid in the oven and the dish separates into curds and broth.
- "1-3 Cup" and "1-11/2 Pints"These are broken fractions from the typesetting: one-third cup of melted fat, and one to one and a half pints of cream sauce. A pint is 2 cups, so you want 2 to 3 cups of sauce for 4 to 6 pounds of fish.
- Fish weight is as purchasedFish weight is probably as purchased -- Given how little sauce is called for, the 4 to 6 pounds most likely means whole or dressed fish rather than flaked flesh; a whole fish yields roughly half its weight in usable meat. Any firm white fish works: cod, haddock, halibut, or leftover cooked salmon.
- Cream sauce, since none is givenA medium white sauce: 4 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons flour, 2 cups milk or light cream, cooked until it coats a spoon, seasoned with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg or lemon. Make it slightly thicker than you would want to eat on its own; the fish will loosen it.
- "Melted Fat"Butter in a cream dish. Recipes of this period often specified "fat" rather than butter, which left room for drippings or margarine, but bacon fat or beef drippings will dominate the sauce.
- The cheeseGrated cheese in American home kitchens of this period would most often have been a dry aged Cheddar or so-called American cheese. Two tablespoons is a browning agent, not a flavor; increase it if you want it to read as a cheese dish.
- Oven and timeThe original gives no temperature. A moderately hot oven, in the region of 375-400F for 20 to 30 minutes, will brown the crumbs and bring the sauce to a bubble at the edges. If everything went in warm, run it under the broiler for two or three minutes instead of a long bake, which only overcooks fish that is already done.
- YieldSix pounds of fish and three cups of sauce fills a large baking dish and serves eight to ten as a main course. Halve everything for a family-sized 8-inch dish.
"À la crème" was one of the French service tags that spread through American home cookery in the late nineteenth century, arriving by way of hotel menus and cooking schools and meaning little more than "in a cream sauce." The dish itself is a close cousin of scalloped oysters and scalloped fish, and the instruction to "make as for scalloped dish" tells you the author expected her reader to have that pattern already in hand: layer or fold the main ingredient into white sauce, cap it with buttered crumbs, brown it. Cookbooks of this era often worked exactly that way, on cross-references and assumed competence, and they leaned hard on white sauce because it stretched expensive protein and rescued cooked fish that would otherwise be thrown out. Fish was also a Friday and Lenten observance for Catholic households, which gave a hostess reason to want a baked fish dish grand enough to carry a French name to the table.