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Fish En Coquilles
1 cup left-over fish
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
8 mussels or clams
I chopped onion
½ cup bread-crums
Salt and pepper
10 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic
Buttered crums
Chop the fish with the mussels or clams. Add the crums which have been soaked in two tablespoons of milk, and the garlic, parsley, onions, salt and pepper. Melt the butter or other fat, and when hot add the mixture and cook several minutes. Stir in one-half cup of milk and fill small ramekins or scallop shells. Cover with buttered crums and bake about fifteen minutes. Serve the dishes on a platter or on individual plates.
A tidy way with leftover cooked fish, baked in shells or ramekins. The ingredient list and the method agree on the milk if you read them together: two tablespoons go into the crumbs, half a cup into the pan, which is the ten tablespoons called for.
- En coquillesThe name means simply "in shells" — deep scallop shells were standard service ware for this kind of dish. Individual ramekins of about ½ cup capacity work identically.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderately hot oven, around 400F, will suit the fifteen minutes stated; the filling is already cooked and you are only heating through and browning the crumb top.
- CrumsThe period spelling of crumbs. Use dry, fine crumbs for the ½ cup that gets soaked, and coarser buttered crumbs for the topping so it browns rather than turns to paste.
- The mussels or clamsThese need to be shucked and cooked before they go in — steam them open, discard any that stay shut, and chop the meats. The few minutes in the pan plus fifteen in the oven will not reliably cook raw shellfish through inside a dense mixture.
- The garlicOne whole clove chopped is assertive by the standards of Anglo-American home cooking of the period. Mince it finely so it cooks out in the pan stage rather than staying raw and sharp.
- Leftover fishCooked white fish, salmon or haddock all suit. Flake it and check for bones and skin before chopping; the mixture is soft enough that a stray bone is unwelcome.
- ConsistencyAfter the half cup of milk goes in, the mixture should be loose enough to spoon but not to pour. If your fish was dry, hold back a little milk; if it slumps, cook a minute longer.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities should fill roughly three or four small ramekins or shells — a first course for that many, or a light supper for two with bread and salad.
Coquilles Saint-Jacques is often said to have given English-speaking cooks the habit of serving small hot dishes in scallop shells, and by the early twentieth century the shell had become a vessel for almost anything creamed and browned: fish, chicken, sweetbreads, mushrooms. Butterick, a pattern company whose magazines and books were aimed at the practical housekeeper, includes a French section — and this is a leftovers recipe in French dress, turning a cup of yesterday's boiled fish into a course worth putting on the table. The garlic and the chopped shellfish are what mark it as continental; a plainer American version of the same dish would have used cream sauce and stopped there.