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Stuffing for Fish
Weigh two pounds of breadcrumbs without the crust, and cut it into small squares; mix them one-half tablespoonful of powdered herbs, and a liberal quantity of salt and pepper. Dissolve six ounces of butter in one-half pint of warm water, and beat in the yolks of four eggs. Pour the liquid mixture over the bread and stir it well, but do not mash it. It is then ready for use.
A plain bread stuffing scaled for a hotel kitchen rather than a home one. The only tricky moment is combining hot butter-water with raw yolks.
- Scale it downTwo pounds of crustless bread crumb is a very large quantity, far more than one fish needs. For a single 3-4 lb whole fish, work at roughly one-quarter: 8 oz bread, 1 1/2 oz butter, 2 fl oz water, one yolk, a scant half-teaspoon of herbs.
- "Breadcrumbs" means torn breadThe instruction to cut it into small squares makes clear this is soft crumb from a day-old loaf, not the dry sandy crumbs sold in canisters today. Dry packaged crumbs will absorb the liquid instantly and turn to paste.
- Powdered herbsA period pantry staple: dried thyme, sage, marjoram and savory ground fine, sometimes with dried parsley. Poultry seasoning is the closest shelf equivalent; for fish, thyme and marjoram with a little parsley suits better than heavy sage.
- Temper the yolksThe butter is dissolved in warm — not boiling — water for a reason. Let it cool to about blood heat before beating in the yolks, or they will set into threads and the mixture will never coat the bread evenly.
- Do not mashThe hinge of the recipe. Fold with a fork or your fingertips until the bread is just damp and still in distinct pieces. Overworked stuffing bakes into a solid, gluey block.
- Seasoning"A liberal quantity" is not hyperbole — two pounds of unsalted bread needs a great deal. Season the liquid rather than the bread so it distributes, and taste it before it meets the yolks.
- Fill loosely, and check the temperaturePack the cavity about three-quarters full so heat can penetrate. Because of the raw yolk, the centre of the stuffing should reach 165F; a stuffed fish will always need longer in the oven than an empty one of the same weight.
- Baked separatelyAny surplus bakes well in a buttered dish at 350F for 25-30 minutes, covered for the first half so it steams rather than dries.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its ranges, and his 1896 Cook Book reads accordingly: component recipes written as building blocks for a brigade, to be drawn on across a range of menu items rather than cooked once for a family. A stuffing weighed out in pounds of crumb and half-pints of water is a batch preparation for a service, not a dish. Bread stuffings bound with egg yolk and enriched butter were standard for whole baked fish in nineteenth-century Anglo-American cookery, where the mass of bread served both to hold the fish's shape and to catch the juices that would otherwise be lost. The absence of onion, lemon or anchovy is worth noting: the seasoning is left almost entirely to a dried herb powder, the sort of ready-mixed pantry article that a large kitchen would keep on hand.