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Terrine of Smelts, Mck. Twombly
Cut off the heads and thoroughly wipe eighteen medium, fresh smelts, split them in two through the back, remove the bones, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, mix in a bowl one and a half ounces butter, three tablespoons bread crumbs, half teaspoon chopped parsley, two finely chopped shallots, the strained juice of half a sound lemon and half teaspoon anchovy essence. Lightly butter the bottom and sides of an earthen cocotte dish, arrange twelve half smelts at the bottom of the cocotte, spread a third of the preparation over them, place twelve more half smelts over, spread a third of the preparation on top, arrange the balance of the smelts on top, neatly spread the balance of the preparation over the fish, pour in a gill of white wine, cover the pan, set in the oven for one hour, remove and serve.
A layered baked smelt dish that reads like a terrine but behaves like a gratin. The original assumes a cook who knows what a moderate oven is and how long a small fish takes; both need stating.
- The hour is far too longBoned smelt fillets are a few millimetres thick and are done in 20 to 25 minutes at 350F, by which point the wine has reduced and the crumb mixture has set. An hour turns them to grey paste. Coal-range ovens of the period ran cooler and less evenly than a modern one, so the time is probably best read as an upper bound rather than an instruction.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Use 350F, covered, in the middle of the oven. If you want colour on top, lift the lid for the last five minutes.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Any dry white wine will do; it is there to keep the fish from drying and to lift the anchovy.
- CocotteIn 1906 this means a lidded earthenware or cast-iron pot, not the small individual ramekin the word now suggests. A 1-quart covered casserole or small Dutch oven is right. If your lid does not seal well, cover with foil first.
- SmeltsSmall silver fish, often sold whole and frozen at fishmongers and Asian groceries. Eighteen medium smelts split through the back give thirty-six halves; the recipe layers twelve, twelve, and "the balance," which comes to twelve on top. Butterflying is easier than filleting: open along the back, lift the spine out in one piece with kitchen shears, leave the tail on or off as you like.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled condiment of salted anchovy, vinegar and spice. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or one mashed oil-packed anchovy fillet, stands in for it directly.
- The crumb mixtureOne and a half ounces of butter is about three tablespoons; have it soft, not melted, so the crumbs, shallot, parsley, lemon and anchovy cream together into a spreadable paste that will stay in its layer rather than running to the bottom.
- SaltA full teaspoon over thirty-six small fillets, plus anchovy, is on the salty side by current taste. Half a teaspoon is enough, and let the anchovy carry the rest.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a first course, two as a main. Serve straight from the pot with bread and lemon; the layers will not slice cleanly like a true terrine, and were never meant to be served cold.
Smelts were one of the great cheap luxuries of the American East Coast table: they ran in enormous numbers in spring, they were sold by the pound rather than the fish, and because they are small enough to eat bones and all they turned up fried, broiled, and skewered on every hotel menu of the period. Boning three dozen of them for a layered dish, as here, is a piece of deliberate labour — the point is to make a humble fish into something served in its own covered dish. The book is Alexander Filippini's, and Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, where the house habit was to attach a patron's name to a dish; the many personal attributions scattered through The International Cook Book are usually taken to be exactly that, regular customers of the restaurant rather than cooks who contributed recipes. The construction — buttered pot, alternating layers of fish and a crumb-and-shallot forcemeat, a splash of white wine, lid on — is standard French bourgeois practice of the era, and the word terrine here refers to the earthenware vessel it was baked in, not to a cold sliceable loaf.