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Fish Loaf
Flake the remnants of any baked fish. There should be two cups; if not, fill out with raw oysters. Add one cup of stuffing left from the fish, or one cup of coarse bread crumbs moistened with melted butter, and one beaten egg. Season well with salt, pepper, and one teaspoonful finely minced pickle.
Turn into a small bread-pan or quart mold, cover with buttered paper, place in pan of hot water and cook in moderate oven about half an hour.
Unmold on a hot platter and serve with white sauce No. 2 (see page 68), adding one-quarter cup cooked peas to the sauce.
A leftover-fish pudding baked in a water bath, which keeps it moist and sliceable rather than dry and crumbly. Everything hinges on the moisture balance and on gentle heat.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (175C). The water bath keeps the loaf below boiling regardless, so the oven number matters less than not going above about 375F, which would set the egg too hard at the edges.
- The water bath is not optionalSet the loaf pan in a larger roasting pan and pour in hot water to come halfway up the sides. Without it the egg curdles and the loaf weeps liquid, and it will not turn out cleanly.
- Buttered paperButtered parchment cut to fit, buttered side down, or foil buttered on the underside. It stops a skin forming and keeps condensation from the water bath off the top.
- White sauce No. 2The book's own numbered white sauces are on page 68 and are not reproduced here. In books of this period such numbered sauces usually run from thin to thick, so No. 2 is likely the medium pouring version, on the order of 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk. Make it a touch thin, since it has to coat a loaf rather than bind anything.
- Raw oysters as fillerHere they mainly supply bulk and moisture, though they will add flavour of their own. Chop anything larger than a bite; whole oysters can cook into rubbery lumps in a set loaf, and they release enough liquor to loosen the mixture, so hold back on any extra butter or milk.
- Reheating cooked fishLeftover baked fish should have been refrigerated promptly and used within a day or two. The loaf's centre needs to reach 165F (74C), which at this size takes about the half hour stated, a little longer for a full quart mould.
- SeasoningTwo cups of flaked cooked fish plus crumbs is bland. Beyond salt and pepper, the teaspoon of minced pickle is the only flavouring the recipe specifies, though the reused stuffing and the pea sauce bring seasoning of their own; lemon juice, a little of the pickle brine, or chopped dill and parsley are within the spirit of it.
- UnmoldingRest the loaf five minutes out of the water, run a knife round the edge, then invert onto the warmed platter. If it is loose, it needed longer or the fish was too wet.
- YieldA quart mould serves four as a main course with the pea sauce, or six as a first course.
Cookbooks devoted entirely to left-overs were a small industry in the United States between roughly 1890 and 1920, when domestic-science writers pressed the case that thrift was a skill rather than a shame, and that yesterday's baked fish could be brought back to the table looking deliberate. The moulded loaf, baked in a water bath in the oven and turned out whole under a sauce, was the standard device for this: it disguises the fact that the main ingredient has already been cooked once, and it lets a small quantity of fish be stretched with crumbs, egg and oysters into something that carves. Oysters are often said to have been more of a commonplace ingredient than a luxury in this period, though their price was rising as beds declined. The instruction to reuse the stuffing from the original baked fish is the tell that this book expects a whole household economy, not a single dish, and the numbered white sauces referenced by page belong to the same systematising impulse, a foundation sauce learned once and cross-referenced throughout the book.