Home › Fish › To Bake Fish Whole
To Bake Fish Whole
No. I Cut off the head and split the fish down nearly to the tail; prepare a dressing of bread, butter substitute, pepper and salt, moisten with a little water.
Fill the dish with this dressing, and bind it together with a piece of string; lay the fish on a bake-pan and pour round it a little water and melted butter substitute.
Baste frequently. A good-sized fish will bake in an hour. Serve with the gravy of the fish.
BAKED FISH No. II Take whatever fish may be desired and place in baking pan. Chop up a little onion, garlic, parsley and tomatoes and spread over fish; then moisten with a little olive oil and bake in moderate oven for about 20 minutes. (This recipe will be found very good for small sole, Rex sole, or sandabs.) Add salt and pepper to taste.
Two methods for one page: a stuffed whole fish baked slow, and a quick Mediterranean-style tray bake. The first needs the most adjustment, since an hour will destroy most fish sold today.
- "Fill the dish" is a typo for the fishThe dressing goes into the cavity opened by splitting the fish down toward the tail, then the body is tied shut with string. Nothing is being filled but the fish itself.
- Butter substituteThis means oleomargarine or a vegetable shortening, used here for economy rather than flavour. Butter or a neutral oil does the same work; the recipe gains nothing from margarine.
- The hour is too longAn hour would suit only a thick whole fish of several pounds; the recipe gives no weight beyond "a good-sized fish," and no oven temperature. Modern practice is roughly 10 minutes per inch at the thickest point in a 400F oven, or until the flesh reaches 145F and parts from the bone. A 2 lb fish held for a full hour will be dry through.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. The second recipe's 20 minutes at that heat suits flatfish fillets or small whole soles, which cook in the time it takes the tomato to soften.
- BastingWith the head off and the belly open, the fish loses moisture fast. The water and fat poured round the pan are there to be spooned back over every ten minutes or so; skipping this is what makes the method fail.
- Bread for the dressingStale white bread, torn or crumbed, not dried packaged crumbs, which absorb the water and go to paste. Moisten only until the crumbs hold together when pressed.
- Rex sole and sandabsBoth are small Pacific-coast flatfish, which points to a West Coast readership. Any small flatfish, whole or filleted, works the same way.
- YieldNot given. As a rough guide, a 4 lb fish done by No. I will feed about four; No. II is portioned by the fish, one small sole or two sandabs per person.
The repeated "butter substitute" suggests economy cookery of the war years or the period around them, when American cookbooks often wrote substitutions straight into the ingredient line rather than as a note; butter, wheat and meat were all subject to conservation campaigns. The second recipe points somewhere else: onion, garlic, parsley, tomato and olive oil over small flatfish is the idiom of the Mediterranean fishing communities of the West Coast ports, taken into a domestic book without comment or attribution.