Turbot
Take a white fish, steam till tender, take out bones, and sprinkle with pepper and salt. For dressing, heat a pint of milk, and thicken with a quarter pound of flour; when cool, add two eggs and a quarter pound of butter, and season with onion and parsley (very little of each); put in the baking-dish a layer of fish, then a layer of sauce, till full, cover the top with bread-crumbs, and bake half an hour. - Mrs. Robert A. Liggett, Detroit,
A Great Lakes cook's version of turbot à la crème: no turbot in it at all, just steamed whitefish layered with a very stiff cream sauce. The sauce is the whole dish, and the proportions are heavier than a modern cook expects.
- The sauce is a panade, not a béchamelA quarter pound of flour to a pint of milk is roughly 1 cup flour to 2 cups milk — a paste stiff enough to hold a spoon upright. That is intentional; it sets into layers that slice. If you want something pourable, use half the flour and expect a softer, more custardy result.
- Measurements by weightA quarter pound of flour is about 1 cup (a scant cup if spooned lightly), a quarter pound of butter is 1/2 cup or one American stick, and a pint is 2 cups. Receipts of this period often gave flour and butter by weight, alongside volume measures like the pint of milk here.
- Let it cool before the eggsThis is the hinge. Two whole eggs beaten into a hot flour paste will scramble into threads. Cool the thickened milk to warm-to-the-touch, beat the eggs in off the heat, then work in the butter.
- "White fish" in DetroitWritten in the Great Lakes, this likely means Coregonus whitefish, a rich, flaky freshwater fish, though the recipe says only "a white fish." Cod, haddock, halibut or any firm white fillet works; roughly 2 lb of fillet will fill a standard 2-quart baking dish in three layers.
- Steam briefly"Till tender" for a fillet is 6-10 minutes depending on thickness — until it just flakes. It gets a further half hour in the oven, so anything steamed to falling-apart will be dry twice over.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven temperature. A moderate oven, around 350F, will bring the assembled dish through in the half hour specified and colour the crumbs; dot the top with butter if you want them properly browned.
- Season harder than "very little"With a cup of flour in the sauce, the onion and parsley called for in trace amounts will disappear. A small grated onion, a good handful of parsley, salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are closer to what the dish needs now.
- YieldAbout six servings as a main course, more as one dish among several. It is rich; serve with something sharp — pickles, lemon, a plain green salad.
Turbot is a European flatfish prized in French and English cookery, and turbot à la crème — poached fish layered with a thick cream sauce and browned crumbs — is often said to have been a company dish in nineteenth-century English kitchens. American cooks inland had no access to it, so "turbot" became the name of the method rather than the fish, and whatever local white-fleshed fish was at hand went into the dish under the borrowed title. That a Detroit contributor sent this in is telling: Great Lakes whitefish was abundant and cheap, and dressing it in a French name raised a weeknight fish supper to something fit for guests. Contributed recipes like this one, credited by name and city, were the backbone of community cookbooks such as this; the borrowed grand titles suggest, though the recipe alone cannot prove it, that such books were aimed at respectable middle-class aspiration as well as at getting dinner on the table.