How To Boil Fish

In getting a fish ready to cook, scale it, draw it, and souse it quickly in cold water. Have ready a kettle holding enough boiling water to cover the fish. Tie the fish in a square of cheesecloth to keep it from dropping apart, and slip into the boiling water.

Allow twenty minutes of boiling for each pound when it is a cut from a large fish of the cod or halibut kind when the fish is small, or long and whole, allow about ten minutes. When the fish is nearly done add salt. Take it from the pot, slip it from the cheesecloth on a hot platter, and serve with some one of the fish sauces found.

In washing the cheesecloth in which the fish was cooked, do not use soap. Wash first in cool water and then in hot till perfectly clean. Dry, fold, and lay aside for next using.

Sauce For Boiled Fish

Make a drawn butter of two heaping tablespoons of butter and two heaping tablespoons of flour, blended together. Put this in a small saucepan. Pour over it hot water to dissolve, add more warm water until you have one pint. Salt to taste. Set this in another saucepan with a small quantity of hot water in it Stir constantly as the water underneath boils, and let it boil slowly. Raise it from the under saucepan now and then, and stir hard to prevent lumping. Return it to the water. Do this until the sauce is thick enough to pour easily. It must be perfectly smooth. Take it from the fire, and add gradually the yolks of two beaten eggs, the juice of half a lemon, a teaspoon of onionjuice, and a tablespoon of chopped parsley. Serve hot.

How To Broil Fish

Have your bluefish, trout, mackerel, shad, or whatever fish you have chosen well cleaned of scales, drawn and split down the back. Souse it for a second in clear cold water, have ready a hot broiler, rub the broiler with suet, and lay on the fish. Present first to the fire the flesh, or inside, of the fish, and when that is seared crisp so the juices will stay in, turn and sear the skin side. Now turn the fish from side to side frequently, and continue the broiling till done. Have ready a hot platter, salt the fish just before taking from the broiler, lay on the hot platter, spread on the fish a few pieces of butter, add thin slices of lemon and serve.

Planked Fish

Fish may be planked before a coal fire, but the broilingoven of a gas stove is more excellent for this sort of cooking. First have your plank of hard, smooth wood. It must be of a size to go easily in your oven; the corners had best be rounded off smoothly. Make ready your succulent shad, or indeed whatever fish you choose, by scaling, drawing, splitting down the back, and a quick, cold plunge, and upon the heated plank lay the fish.

Its skin side must be against the board. Set under the broiler, and cook quickly for the first five minutes, more slowly afterward. As the broiling goes on, baste the fish with boiling hot water slightly salted. When it is done, which ought to be unless it is very thick, in from twelve to seventeen minutes, draw the plank from the oven, set it on a hot platter or a napkin, spread with butter, garnish with thin slices or quarters of lemon and parsley, and serve the fish on the board and all on the platter or napkin.

A word should be added about the care of the plank on which the fish is cooked. Do not wash it with soap. Scour it clean, wash it with boiling water, dry it perfectly, treat it carefully and keep it long, for an old board, that is one upon which fish have been planked, is better than a new one for cooking.

Scalloped Fish

Pick in small pieces two pounds of cold boiled fish. Make a cream by heating a pint of milk and mixing in quarter of a cup of flour and a scant teacup of butter. When the milk thickens season with salt, pepper, thyme, and chopped parsley, and if your taste directs also with a minced onion. Take at once from the fire, and as the cream cools stir in the beaten yolks of four eggs. Have a buttered baking dish, and put in a layer of the cream, then a layer of the fish, then of cream, and then of fish, so alternating till the top layer of cream is reached. On the top layer put grated cheese and breadcrumbs, and bake in a moderate oven about forty minutes.

Steamed Fish

Have about a twoandahalfpound fish, cod or halibut, mashed very fine and raw. Season to your taste with salt, pepper, and onionjuice. Add three eggs beaten together, three tablespoons of flour, and milk enough to moisten. Put the fish in a mold and steam two hours. For a sauce to eat with this fish, follow the directions for a cream sauce. Season the sauce highly with cayenne, and add boiled lobster cut in small bits.

Creamed Cod or Halibut

Take boiled cod or halibut left from another meal and kept cold. Pick it to pieces, and take out all the bones and skin. To the proportion of about half a pound of the fish take a tablespoon of butter and the same quantity of flour. In a saucepan over a moderate fire stir the butter and flour together, add half a cup of milk and a pinch of salt, and when the whole boils up a dash of pepper. Stir in the fish, heat slowly, and put in a hot dish, setting halves of hardboiled eggs round the edge.