Baked Halibut
2 lbs. halibut. 1 cupful tomatoes. 2 tablespoonfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 3/4 teaspoonful salt ⅛ teaspoonful pepper Clean fish, season with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, place in Criscoed baking pan, pour over tomatoes, and dot with Crisco. Bake in a moderate oven, basting often.
A plain baked fish with a tomato topping, written in the compressed style of an early Crisco pamphlet. The ingredient list as printed covers only the seasoning and fat, so the fish and tomatoes need judgment.
- Quantities to assumeThe printed list omits the fish and the tomatoes entirely. About 2 lb of halibut (a thick center-cut steak or a piece of fillet) and roughly 2 cups of canned or peeled fresh tomatoes is a reasonable reconstruction, and the flour, salt and pepper given suit roughly that amount.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony quickly, so check early: a 1-inch steak needs about 20 minutes, and it is done when the flesh is just opaque at the thickest point and flakes under gentle pressure.
- CriscoThe original hydrogenated shortening the book was written to sell. Modern Crisco is reformulated and works the same way here, but butter or oil is equally good; the fat is only there to grease the pan and to dot the top.
- Criscoed baking panSimply a well-greased pan. Use one only a little larger than the fish, or the tomato juices spread thin and scorch.
- Basting oftenThis is the hinge. There is very little liquid, so open the oven every five minutes or so and spoon the tomato and pan juices back over the fish, or the exposed surface dries before the interior is set.
- Pepper measureThe printed "18 teaspoonful" is one-eighth of a teaspoon.
- YieldTwo pounds of halibut serves four. It wants a starch that will take the tomato juices — boiled potatoes or rice.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in the years after the product's 1911 introduction, and it is a cookbook written to make an unfamiliar ingredient look ordinary. Hydrogenated cottonseed oil had no place in any cook's repertoire, so the pamphlet's answer was to print several hundred entirely conventional American recipes with the new fat quietly inserted wherever lard or butter would once have stood — hence "Criscoed baking pan" and "dot with Crisco," phrasing that reads as advertising because it is. Baked halibut with tomatoes was a standard of the period: halibut was firm enough to hold together in a pan, and mild enough to carry a tomato dressing. The dish belongs to the same plain school as baked cod and stuffed haddock that fills the fish chapters of nearly every American household manual of the era.