To Broil Fish
Rub the bars of your gridiron with dripping or a piece of beef suet, to prevent the fish from sticking. Put a good piece of butter substitute into a dish, enough salt and pepper to season the fish. Lay the fish on it when it is broiled, and with a knife put the butter over every part. Serve very hot.
This is a method rather than a measured recipe: the whole of it is greasing the grate, cooking the fish over direct heat, and finishing it in a dish of seasoned fat. A few blanks need filling in.
- The gridironA gridiron is a rack of iron bars set over live coals, the ancestor of the barbecue grate. A ridged cast-iron grill pan or an outdoor grill does the same job; a broiler element in an oven works too, though the fish sits under the heat rather than over it.
- Greasing the barsThis is the hinge of the recipe. Dripping or suet rubbed on hot bars is what keeps the skin from tearing away when you turn the fish. Any high-smoke-point fat will do, and the bars must be hot before the fish goes down.
- "Butter substitute"In cookbooks of roughly this era the phrase generally meant margarine or oleomargarine, though it could also cover lard or a compound cooking fat. Butter is the obvious modern reading; the point is a pool of seasoned fat waiting in a warm dish.
- No times are givenAssume roughly 4-5 minutes per side for a fish or fillet about an inch thick, less for thin ones, and turn only once. Fish is done when the flesh has just lost its translucency at the thickest point; it will carry on cooking in the hot dish.
- What sort of fishBroiling suits split small fish, steaks and firm fillets left skin-on. Delicate flaking fillets fall through the bars; use a fish cage or a grill pan for those.
- Warm the dishThe recipe does not say so, but a warmed dish keeps the butter and seasoning melting when the fish arrives; on a cold plate the fat sets into streaks. The closing 'serve very hot' at least points the same way.
- YieldThe recipe gives none. As a modern guide, allow one whole small fish or a 6-8 oz portion per person; for two fillets, about 2 tablespoons of butter with a good pinch of salt and pepper would suit the "good piece" called for.
Broiling over coals is among the oldest ways of cooking fish, and one that survived in the domestic kitchen with almost no equipment: a gridiron, a fire, and a rag of suet. The recipe's terse shape is common in household and bride's books, which tend to assume the reader had watched someone cook and needed reminders rather than lessons. The instruction to use a "butter substitute" suggests a date after margarine had become an accepted household fat, though the phrase alone will not pin the book down. What has not changed is the underlying logic: fat on the bars to stop the fish sticking, fat on the plate to keep it from drying, and heat all the way to the table.