Baked Fish
Clean, rinse, and wipe dry a white fish, or any fish weighing three or four pounds, rub the fish inside and out with salt and pepper, fill with a stuffing made like that for poultry, but drier; sew it up and put in a hot pan, with some drippings and a lump of butter, dredge with flour, and lay over the fish a few thin slices of salt pork or bits of butter, and bake an hour and a half, basting occasionally. Mrs. A. Wilson, Rye, New York.
A plain baked stuffed fish of the kind that appeared in nearly every American community cookbook of the 1880s. The only instruction that genuinely needs rethinking is the time.
- The hour and a halfA 3-4 lb stuffed whole fish is generally done in 45 to 60 minutes at 400F, or when the flesh at the backbone flakes and reads 145F. Ninety minutes is likely to leave the flesh dry and cottony; the long time in the original probably reflects the uneven, hard-to-regulate heat of a wood range.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. "A hot pan" means the pan and fat are preheated so the skin sets rather than sticks. Heat the oven and the pan to 400-425F, then put the fish in.
- White fishIn this period "white fish" often points to Great Lakes whitefish, a comparatively oily freshwater fish, though the term was also used loosely for white-fleshed fish in general. Any whole round fish of 3-4 lb works: striped bass, snapper, trout, branzino scaled up, or a small salmon.
- DrippingsFat rendered from roasted meat, kept in a crock by the stove. Bacon fat, lard or clarified butter all stand in; a mild oil is fine if you want the fish to taste of fish.
- "Drier" stuffingThe warning matters. A bread stuffing that would suit a chicken absorbs fish juices and turns to paste, so use noticeably less liquid than usual and pack it loosely. Roughly 2 to 3 cups fills a 4 lb fish.
- Salt pork on topThin slices of salt pork (the recipe allows bits of butter instead) act as self-basting insurance, useful if the fish is on the lean side. Blanch modern salt pork briefly if it is very salty, or use unsmoked bacon; the fish has already been salted inside and out.
- Sewing upTrussing needles and kitchen twine still do the job, but two or three short metal skewers laced through the belly flaps are faster and come out cleanly at the table.
- YieldA 3-4 lb whole fish with stuffing serves four to six, allowing for head, bones and skin.
The Dixie Cook Book was one of the many regional reissues of the Ohio-born Practical Housekeeping family of cookbooks that circulated in the 1880s, assembled from contributions solicited from housewives and then reprinted with a new title and a new territorial claim. The attribution here to a Mrs. A. Wilson of Rye, New York, in a book marketed to Southern kitchens, is a good illustration of how loosely those claims sat on the contents. The dish itself is thoroughly generic nineteenth-century American: a whole fish stuffed like a bird, larded with salt pork because most freshwater and inshore fish were leaner than the pork barrel that anchored the pantry, and dredged with flour to encourage a browned surface. "White fish" in a book of this vintage most often points to Great Lakes whitefish, which was shipped inland packed in ice and barrels during these decades and was, by most accounts, a relatively inexpensive fresh fish away from the coasts.