When I buy fish, I often pan-fry it in butter, rather than deep fry it. Sometimes I’ll bake fish, but I’ve never boiled it. I like fish a lot and need to cook it more often and in different ways.

INFORMATION BELOW COMPILED FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS

DRESSING FISH
In dressing fish of any kind for the table, great care is necessary in cleaning it. It is a common error to wash it too much, and by this means the flavor is diminished. If the fish is to be boiled after it is cleaned, a little salt and vinegar should be put into the water to give it firmness. Codfish, whiting, and haddock, are far better if a little salted, and kept a day; and if the weather be not very hot, they will be good two days.

Fresh water fish having frequently a muddy smell and taste, should be soaked in strong salt and water after it has been well cleaned. If of a sufficient size, it may be scalded in salt and water, and afterwards dried and dressed.

TO MAKE CHOWDER
The best fish for chowder are haddock and striped bass. Cut the fish in pieces of an inch thick and two inches square. Take six or eight good-sized slices of salt pork, put in the bottom of an iron pot, and fry them in the pot till crisped. Take out the pork, leaving the fat. Chop the pork fine.

Put in the pot a layer of fish, a layer of split crackers, some of the chopped pork, black and red pepper, and chopped onion, then another layer of fish, split crackers, and seasoning. Do this till you have used your fish. Then just cover the fish with water, and stew slowly till the fish is perfectly tender. Take out the fish, put it in the dish in which you mean to serve it, and set it to keep warm. Thicken the gravy with pounded cracker; add, if you like, mushroom catsup and Port wine. Boil the gravy up once, and pour over the fish; squeeze in the juice of a lemon, and garnish with slices of lemon.

If not salt enough from the pork, more must be added.

TO BOIL FISH
Fill the fish with a stuffing of chopped salt pork, and bread, or bread and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, and sew it up. Then sew it into a cloth or you cannot take it up well. Put it in cold water with water enough to cover it, salted at the rate of a teaspoon of salt to each pound of fish, and about three tablespoons of vinegar. Boil it slowly for twenty or thirty minutes, or till the fin is easily drawn out. Serve with drawn butter* and eggs, with capers or nasturtiums* in it.

Fish can be baked in the same way, except sewing it up in a cloth. Instead of this, cover it with egg and cracker, or bread crumbs.

*drawn butter – butter melted until it foams and the solids sink. Foam is skimmed off and the solids discarded, leaving clear butter.
*nasturtium – a flower whose seeds can be pickled and used as a substitute for capers.

TO BAKE FISH
Cod, bass, and shad are good for baking. Stuff them with a seasoning made of bread crumbs or crackers, butter, salt, pepper, and, if you like, spices. Put the fish in a bake-pan, with a teacup* of water and a bit of butter, and bake from forty-five to sixty minutes.

*teacup – same as a jill or gill; four ounces (1/2 cup) in the U.S. and five ounces in the U.K.

TO FRY FISH
To fry, use lard, not butter. Clean fresh lard is not near so expensive as oil or clarified butter, and does almost as well. Butter often burns before you are aware of it, and what you fry will get a dark and dirty appearance.

The fat you have fried fish in must not be used for any other purpose.

Fry some slices of salt pork, say a slice for each pound, and when brown take them up, and add lard enough to cover the fish. Skim it well and have it hot, then dip the fish in flour without salting it, and fry a light brown. Then take the fish up, and add to the gravy a little flour paste, pepper, salt; also wine, catsup, and spices, if you like. Put the fish and pork on a dish, and, after one boil, pour this gravy over the whole.

Fish are good dipped first in egg and then in Indian meal,* or cracker crumbs and egg, previous to frying.

*Indian meal – coarsely ground corn (cornmeal).

TO BROIL FISH
Salt fish must be soaked several hours before broiling. Rub suet on the bars of your gridiron, then put the fish flesh side down (some say skin side down, as it saves the juices better), and broil till nearly cooked through. Then lay a dish on it, and turn the fish by inverting the gridiron over the dish. Broil slowly, and never pile broiled fish one above another on the dish.

A GOOD WAY OF USING COLD FRESH FISH
Take cold cooked fish, chop it with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and boiled salt pork, or ham; season with salt, pepper, catsup, or wine. Mold into balls with egg and bread crumbs, and fry in lard.

TO COOK EELS
Dress them, lay them open flat, rub them with salt and pepper, cut them in short pieces, and broil them. Small ones are best skinned and fried.

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What Kind of Fish do You Like to Eat?  Please Leave a Comment Below

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