Spiced Fish
2 Cupfuls Cooked Flaked Fish 1 Cupful Cooked Oats 2 Teaspoons Sage 1/2 Teaspoon Savory 1/2 Teaspoon Thyme Pinch of Sweet Marjoram Salt and Pepper to Taste 1 Tablespoon Melted Fat 1/4 Cup Fine Cracker Crumbs Mix, form into flat or oblong sausages, roll in crumbs and brown in the oven, basting with drippings, or saute in drippings.
A leftovers dish: cooked fish and cooked oatmeal bound with herbs and shaped into sausage forms. The original gives no oven temperature, no time and no yield, so a few decisions have to be made for it.
- Cooked oatsThis means leftover cooked oatmeal porridge, not raw rolled oats or steel-cut groats. Cook about 1/2 cup of rolled oats in water to a thick porridge and cool it fully; a warm, loose porridge will not hold a shape.
- The hinge: get the mixture cold and dryThere is no egg here, so the binding depends on the starch in the oats, any crumbs worked into the mixture, and the chill. Mix, then refrigerate at least an hour before shaping, and keep the fish well drained — wet flakes will slump in the pan.
- Oven heatFor browning shaped cakes with basting, 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, turning once, gives colour without drying the interior. Everything is already cooked, so this step is purely about crust.
- DrippingsBacon fat or beef drippings are the likely intention here and carry much of the savour. Butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, works; the melted tablespoon in the mixture contributes as well as the fat in the pan.
- Herbs are dried, and there are a lot of themTwo teaspoons of dried sage in a mixture this small is assertive by modern standards. Start with one teaspoon, taste a small fried test patty, and adjust before shaping the rest.
- The fishAny firm cooked white fish or leftover salmon; pick over carefully for bones and skin, since the flaking hides them. Smoked fish will overwhelm the sage.
- Yield and servingMakes about eight sausages, enough for four as a light main course. Serve with a sharp sauce — tomato, mustard or a lemon butter — as the mixture itself is soft and mild.
This is a mock sausage, and the seasoning gives it away: sage, savory, thyme and marjoram are the classic pork-sausage herbs, applied here to fish and porridge. Recipes of this kind are often said to have multiplied in English and American household books during and just after the First World War, when meat was scarce or dear and oats and leftover fish were not, and they seem to have persisted afterwards in books aimed at young housekeepers learning to use up what was already cooked. The trick of extending a small amount of protein with cooked cereal is much older than the war, though; oatmeal has bulked out Scottish and northern English puddings and sausages for centuries, white pudding among them.