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Red Snapper, Mobile
Scale, clean, split through the back and remove the bones from a three-pound fresh red snapper. Heat two tablespoons oil in a large frying pan, add one finely minced green pepper, six small, sound, minced shallots and cook for two minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile; then add half teaspoon chopped parsley and half teaspoon chopped chives. Lay the fish on top; season with a teaspoon salt and a saltspoon Spanish saffron; pour in one gill tomato sauce, one gill cream and six heads sliced canned mushrooms. Cover the pan and boil for two minutes, then place the pan in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, dress the fish on a hot dish, pour all the contents of the pan over the fish and serve.
A butterflied whole snapper braised on an aromatic bed and finished in the oven. The measurements are pre-standard and the oven temperature is left to the cook, so both need pinning down.
- A gillHalf a cup. You need half a cup of tomato sauce and half a cup of cream, which together make just enough liquid to keep a butterflied fish moist without stewing it.
- SaltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. A quarter teaspoon of saffron threads is a large amount by modern standards and by modern prices; a generous pinch, crumbled into the warm cream first, gives the same colour and a cleaner flavour.
- ShallotsIn Gulf Coast cooking of this period "shallots" often meant green onions. Either works, but scallions suit the dish and cook in the two minutes given.
- Oven heatNone is specified. A moderately hot oven, 400F, is right for a covered pan already at a simmer.
- The timing to watchTwenty minutes may overcook a boned three-pound snapper laid flat. Start checking at twelve minutes; the flesh should just separate from the bone line but still look moist. Note that the USDA recommends cooking fish to 145F at the thickest point.
- Mushrooms"Six heads" most likely means six whole caps, sliced. Canned mushrooms were a common pantry item when this was written; about four ounces of sliced fresh cremini, added with the liquid, will do the same job, though they will not be as soft as the canned.
- Pan and transferUse an oven-safe skillet with a lid, or a shallow braiser. Lifting a boned fish out whole is easier with two wide spatulas, or slide it out on the lid.
- YieldA three-pound whole snapper serves three, four at a stretch. Rice or bread is worth having for the saffron cream.
Red snapper is the fish of the Gulf, and Mobile was one of the ports that shipped it inland once rail and ice made that possible in the late nineteenth century; a cookbook could reasonably print a snapper recipe and expect it to be attempted. The dish itself reads as Creole rather than French: green pepper, green onions, parsley and tomato are the standard aromatic base of that coast. Books like this one collected regional American dishes alongside European ones, treating Mobile as a culinary place in the same way as Marseille or Milan, and the place-name in the title is the whole of the attribution the compiler thought necessary.