Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. Marion Harland
the shad upon a hot dish, with a boat of drawn butter mingled with chopped eggs and parsley, or egg-sauce. Lay the roes about the body of the fish. Garnish with capers and slices of hard boiled eggs.
Boiled Shad. (Salt.)
Soak the fish six or seven hours in warm water, changing it several times; wipe off all the salt and immerse in ice-cold water. When it has lain in this an hour, put into a fish-kettle with enough fresh water to cover it, and boil from fifteen to twenty minutes, in proportion to the size. Serve in a hot dish, with a large lump of butter spread over the fish.
Broiled Shad. (Fresh.) ✠
Wash, wipe, and split the fish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and lay it upon a buttered gridiron, inside downward. When the lower side is browned, turn the fish. One of medium size will be done in about twenty minutes. Serve upon a hot dish, and lay a good piece of butter upon the fish.
Broiled Shad. (Salt.)
Soak over night in lukewarm water. Take out in the morning and transfer to ice-cold for half an hour. Wipe very dry, and broil as you do fresh shad.
Fried Shad.
This is a popular dish upon Southern tables, and is good anywhere. Clean, wash, and wipe a fine roe-shad; split and cut each side into four pieces, leaving out the head, and removing fins and tail. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour. Have ready a frying pan of boiling hot lard or drippings; put in the fish and fry brown, turning at the end of five minutes to cook the other side. Fry the roe in the same way; lay the fish in the middle of the dish, and the roe outside of it; garnish with water-cresses and sprigs of pickled cauliflower, and eat with catsup.
Baked Shad. ✠
Clean, wash, and wipe the fish, which should be a large one. Make a stuffing of grated bread-crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and sweet herbs. Stuff the shad and sew it up. Lay it in the baking-pan, with a cupful of water to keep it from burning, and bake an hour, basting with butter and water, until it is tender throughout and well browned. Take it up, put in a hot dish and cover tightly, while you boil up the gravy with a great spoonful of catsup, a tablespoonful of browned flour which has been wet with cold water, the juice of a lemon, and, if you want to have it very fine, a glass of Sherry or Madeira. Garnish with sliced lemon and water-cresses. You may pour the gravy around the fish, or serve in a sauce-boat. Of course you take out the thread with which it has been sewed up before serving the fish.
Boiled Sea-Bass.
Clean and put the fish into the fish-kettle, with salted water enough to cover it when you have enveloped it in the fish-cloth. A medium-sized fish will be done in a little over half an hour. But do not boil too fast. When done, drain and serve in a hot dish. Lay sliced boiled eggs upon and about it, and serve with egg-sauce, mingled with capers and nasturtium seed.
Fried Sea-Bass.
Use smaller fish for this purpose than for boiling. Clean, wipe dry, inside and out, dredge with flour and season with salt. Fry in hot butter or dripping. A mixture, half butter, half lard, is good for frying fish. The bass should be done to a delicate brown—not to a crisp. The fashion affected by some cooks of drying fried fish to a crust is simply abominable.
Fried bass are a most acceptable breakfast dish.
Sturgeon Steak.
Skin the steaks carefully and lay in salted water (cold) for an hour, to remove the oily taste, so offensive to most palates. Then wipe each steak dry, salt, and broil over hot coals on a buttered gridiron. Serve in a hot dish when you have buttered and peppered them, and send up garnished with parsley and accompanied by a small glass dish containing sliced lemon.
Or,
You can pour over them a sauce prepared in this way:—
Put a tablespoonful of butter into a frying-pan, and stir until it is brown—not burned. Add a half-teacupful of boiling water in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of browned flour previously wet with cold water. Add salt, a teaspoonful Worcestershire sauce or anchovy, the juice of a lemon, and let it boil up well. Pour over the steaks when you have arranged them in the dish.
Baked Sturgeon.
A piece of sturgeon weighing five or six pounds is enough for a handsome dish. Skin it and let it stand in salt and water for half an hour. Parboil it to remove the oil. Make a dressing of bread-crumbs, minute bits of fat salt pork, sweet herbs, and butter. Gash the upper part of the fish quite deeply, and rub this force-meat well in; put in a baking-pan with a little water to keep it from burning, and bake for an hour.
Serve with a sauce of drawn butter, in which has been stirred a spoonful of caper sauce and another of catsup.
This is a Virginia receipt, and an admirable one.
Mayonnaise. (Fish.)
Take a pound or so of cold boiled fish (halibut, rock, or cod), cut—not chop—into pieces an inch in length. Mix in a bowl a dressing as follows: the yolks of four boiled eggs rubbed to a smooth paste with salad oil; add to these salt, pepper, mustard, two teaspoonfuls white sugar, and, lastly, six tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Beat the mixture until light, and just before pouring it over the fish, stir in lightly the frothed white of a raw egg. Serve the fish in a glass dish, with half the dressing stirred in with it. Spread the remainder over the top, and lay blanched lettuce-leaves around the edges, to be eaten with it.
Baked Salmon-Trout. ✠
Those who have eaten this prince of game fish in the Adirondacks, within an hour after he has left the lake, will agree with me that he never has such justice done him at any other time as when baked with