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October 14
Menu: Grilled Halibut with Parmesan; Roast Mutton, Currant Jelly Sauce; Creamed Turnips; Browned Sweet Potatoes; American Salad; Apple and Prune Pie; Coffee; Grilled Halibut with Parmesan-; Take desired number of fillets of; halibut and grill on both sides until; nicely browned. Take from broiler,; spread with Crisco, cover with; grated Parmesan cheese, season with; salt and dash of paprika on each; slice, and set in hot oven until; cheese is well browned and melted.; Serve with lemon slices and potato; balls tossed in melted Crisco con-; taining chopped parsley.
A menu-book entry rather than a worked recipe, so the cook is expected to supply quantities and judgment. Two things carry it: not overcooking the fish, and getting the cheese to brown before the halibut dries out.
- "Grill" means broilIn American books of this period the broiler is the heat source, and "grilled" means cooked under it. Set the rack close enough that the surface browns in a few minutes a side.
- Halibut is lean and unforgivingFillets an inch thick need roughly 4 minutes a side under a hot broiler, to about 130-135F at the center. Halibut has almost no fat to buffer it and turns chalky within a few degrees of done, so the second trip into the oven should be short.
- "Hot oven"Roughly 400-450F in books of this period. The fish is already cooked at this stage; the oven is only there to melt and color the cheese, which takes two or three minutes. A broiler pass works as well if you watch it.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, the product the book exists to sell. Spread on hot fish it does little but hold the cheese in place; softened butter or olive oil does the same job with flavor.
- ParmesanGrate it fine so it melts into a sheet rather than sitting in dry shreds. Pre-grated tubs contain anti-caking cellulose and brown poorly.
- Potato ballsCut from raw potatoes with a melon baller or scoop, then boiled or steamed until tender and rolled in fat with parsley. Trimmings go to soup or mash.
- Salt and the cheeseParmesan is salty enough that the fish needs only a light seasoning before the cheese goes on.
- YieldFigure a 6-8 oz fillet, 2 tablespoons grated cheese and a dozen potato balls per person.
- SourcingAtlantic halibut stocks have not recovered from twentieth-century fishing; Pacific halibut is the reliably managed choice, and thick cod or hake loin behaves similarly under the broiler.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written for Procter & Gamble by Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of Ladies' Home Journal, to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had only appeared in 1911: cottonseed oil hardened by hydrogenation into a white, odorless solid that behaved like lard but kept without refrigeration and carried no animal association. The "Calendar of Dinners" section that this dish belongs to is a year of dated menus, one for each day, and its real purpose is repetition -- Crisco appears in the fish, in the potatoes and in the pastry so that the reader stops thinking of it as a substitute for anything. The dish itself is a standard hotel-kitchen treatment of the era, fish finished au gratin with grated cheese and a dash of paprika, paprika being the fashionable garnish of the 1910s for anything pale.