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Stuffed Salmon, Halibut or Fish Fillets
1½ pounds fish sliced 1/2 inch Celery or tomato bread stuffing thick or 2 medium sized fish fillets Salt and pepper 1/2 tablespoon Karo, Blue Label 1/4 cup Mazola Remove the bones and skin. If sliced fish is being used cut in halves. Put one in a baking pan well oiled with Mazola, dust with salt and pepper, put on a layer of dressing, then one of fish, then layer of dressing, and bake in a hot oven forty to fifty minutes according to thickness of the fish, basting often with the Mazola and Karo, combined with one-half cup boiling water. Serve on a platter with a garnish of sliced lemon and accompany with French Fried Egg Plant, Squash or Cucumbers.
A brand-book recipe from the corn-products people, built so that both Mazola and Karo appear in a dish that needs neither in quantity. It works as written, though the oven instruction is the part to question.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no number; a "hot oven" in this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat, forty to fifty minutes risks overcooking a half-inch slice of salmon or halibut; 375F is the sensible reading, and the fish is done at 145F at the centre of the flesh, not the stuffing.
- Timing, honestlyTwo half-inch slices sandwiching stuffing make a parcel about an inch and a half thick. Twenty-five to thirty minutes is realistic. Judge by the fish flaking and by temperature, not by the clock the book gives.
- Karo Blue LabelKaro was sold in colour-coded labels; Blue was the light, near-colourless syrup, Red the darker one. Any light corn syrup stands in. Half a tablespoon in a basting liquid is there for gloss and a faint sweetness on the surface, nothing more.
- MazolaCorn oil, then a relatively new refined product. Any neutral oil works; the quarter cup is generous for basting and you will not use all of it.
- The basting liquidOil, syrup and half a cup of boiling water do not emulsify. Whisk before each basting or you will spoon on water one time and oil the next.
- The stuffingCelery or tomato bread stuffing was presumably given elsewhere in the same book; period versions of both are generally dry bread crumbs with chopped celery or drained tomato, seasoning and fat. Keep it on the dry side, since the fish releases liquid as it bakes and a wet dressing turns to paste.
- Skin and bonesRemoving the skin before baking, as directed, means the slices have nothing holding them together. Handle them with two spatulas going into the pan and coming out.
- YieldA pound and a half of fish with stuffing serves three, four at a stretch with the fried vegetable the recipe suggests alongside.
This comes from a corn-products promotional cookbook of the sort that flooded American kitchens in the 1910s and 1920s, when Mazola corn oil and Karo corn syrup were both being pushed as modern, scientific replacements for butter, lard and cane sugar. The tell is the ingredient list: half a tablespoon of syrup in a basting liquid is not a culinary decision, it is a marketing one. The dish underneath the branding is older and entirely standard — a stuffed baked fish, layered rather than cavity-filled because the recipe assumes steaks or fillets from a fish counter rather than a whole fish. The suggested accompaniments, French-fried eggplant, squash or cucumber, seem to point to the same source, since they too would presumably be cooked in the sponsor's oil.