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Fish Loaf
2 cups cooked fish or I can fish 2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup thick white sauce
Drain the fish and tear into small bits. Add the salt, the beaten egg-yolks, the white sauce, and the beaten egg-whites. Pour into a greased baking-dish and bake for twenty or thirty minutes.
A plain baked fish pudding of the sort that filled out weekday menus when a can of salmon was the cheapest protein in the pantry. The recipe assumes you already know two things it never states: the oven temperature and what "thick white sauce" means.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A loaf bound with egg and sauce wants a moderate oven, 350F. Anything hotter curdles the custard at the edges before the centre sets.
- Thick white sauceBooks generally give 3 to 4 tablespoons each of butter and flour to 1 cup of milk for a "thick" sauce (2 tablespoons each makes only a medium one), cooked together, the milk whisked in and simmered until it mounds on the spoon. A thin sauce will leave the loaf loose and weeping.
- "1 can fish"Around 1900 this most often meant a 1-lb tall can of salmon, which after draining is in the neighbourhood of the 2 cups called for. A modern 14.75-oz can of salmon or two 5-oz cans of tuna is roughly equivalent; pick out skin and the larger vertebrae if you object to them, though many recipes of the period had them mashed in.
- The egg whitesThey are beaten separately and added last, and they are what lightens the mixture. Fold them in gently and bake without delay, or the loaf bakes dense rather than light.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt is generous if you are using canned salmon packed in salt, so taste the mixture first. Lemon juice, a grating of nutmeg, pepper and chopped parsley are all period-appropriate additions and the loaf needs at least one of them.
- Baking dish and water bathA greased loaf pan or 1-quart dish is right. Setting it in a pan of hot water gives a more even, custardy set, which is how similar fish puddings in French cookery are handled.
- Doneness and timingTwenty to thirty minutes is realistic for a shallow dish; a deep loaf pan may need 40 to 45. It is done when the centre is firm to a light press and a knife comes out clean.
- Yield and servingServes four as a main course. It is dry on its own — keep back some of the white sauce, or make an egg sauce or tomato sauce to pour over.
Fish loaf belongs to the moment when canned salmon is generally said to have become a national staple in American and British kitchens, cheap, shelf-stable, and in need of a use beyond salad. The method resembles French cookery: a panade or thick béchamel bound with yolks, lightened with beaten whites, and baked — the same logic as a pain de poisson or a quenelle mixture, simplified for a household without a sieve, a mortar, or a cook. Recipes of this kind are often said to have been promoted by the domestic-science movement of the 1890s and 1900s, which prized dishes that stretched a small quantity of protein, used up leftovers, and could be measured in level cups rather than judged by eye. The near-total absence of seasoning is characteristic of that school rather than of French practice.