Make the sauce of cream if you have it, and if not use a very heaping tablespoonful of butter in the white sauce. Keep this hot.
Drain off the oyster-juice and wash the oysters by holding them under the cold-water faucet. Strain the juice and put the oysters back in it, and put them on the fire and let them just simmer till the edges of the oysters curl; then drain them from the juice again and drop them in the sauce, and add a little more salt (celery-salt is nice if you have it), and just a tiny bit of cayenne pepper. You can serve the oysters on squares of buttered toast, or put them in a large dish, with sifted bread-crumbs over the top and tiny bits of butter, and brown in the oven. Or you can put them in small dishes as they are, and put a sprig of parsley in each dish.
Select the largest, thickest and fattest, the females being the best; they should be alive when brought from market. Wash and put them alive into boiling water, add a little salt, and boil them until thoroughly done, or from ten to fifteen minutes, after which take off the shell, extract the meat, and remove carefully the sand-bag and gall; also all the entrails; they are unfit to eat, and are no longer used in cooking terrapins for the best tables. Cut the meat into pieces, and put it into a stewpan with its eggs, and sufficient fresh butter to stew it well. Let it stew till quite hot throughout, keeping the pan carefully covered, that none of the flavor may escape, but shake it over the fire while stewing. In another pan make a sauce of beaten yolk of egg, highly flavored with Madeira or sherry, and powdered nutmeg and mace, a gill of currant jelly, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and salt to taste, enriched with a large lump of fresh butter. Stir this sauce well over the fire, and when it has almost come to a boil take it off. Send the terrapins to the table hot in a covered dish, and the sauce separately in a sauce tureen, to be used by those who like it, and omitted by those who prefer the genuine flavor of the terrapins when simply stewed with butter. This is now the usual mode of dressing terrapins in Maryland, Virginia, and many other parts of the South, and will be found superior to any other. If there are no eggs in the terrapin, "egg balls" may be substituted. (See recipe.)
The mackerel is one of the most beautiful of fish, being known by its silvery whiteness. It sometimes attains to the length of twenty inches, but usually, when fully grown, is about fourteen or sixteen inches long, and about two pounds in weight. To carve a baked mackerel, first remove the head and tail by cutting downward at 1 and 2; then split them down the back, so as to serve each person a part of each side piece. The roe should be divided in small pieces and served with each piece of fish. Other whole fish may be carved in the same manner. The fish is laid upon a little sauce or folded napkin, on a hot dish, and garnished with parsley.
1 can of fish, or 1 pint. 1 large cup of cracker or bread crumbs. 1 large cup of white sauce.
Prepare this dish almost as you did the scalloped oysters. Take out all the bones and skin and juice from the fish; butter a baking-dish, put in a layer of fish, then salt and pepper, then a layer of crumbs and butter, and a layer of white sauce, then fish, seasoning, crumbs and butter again, and have the crumbs on top. Dot over with butter and brown in the oven, or serve in small dishes.
Fillet the fish, wash and trim them, roll them lightly up with the skin inside. Rub a baking sheet with some butter or dripping. Put on the rolls of fish close together. Squeeze over them some lemon juice, cover with a piece of buttered paper, and bake in the oven for twenty minutes or until they look milk white. Dish them carefully, make the white sauce by recipe given, season it with pepper, salt, and half a teaspoonful of lemon juice. Chop half a teaspoonful of parsley very finely and stir it in, pour over the fish, and serve.
A general role for boiling fish, which will hold good for all kinds, and thus save a great deal of time and space, is this: Any fresh fish weighing between four and six pounds should be first washed in cold water and then put into boiling water enough to cover it, and containing one table-spoonful of salt. Simmer gently thirty minutes; then take up. A fish kettle is a great convenience, and it can be used also for boiling hams. When you do not have a fish kettle, keep a piece of strong white cotton cloth in which pin the fish before putting into the boiling water. This will hold it in shape. Hard boiling will break the fish, and, of course, there will be great waste, besides the dish's not looking so handsome and appetizing. There should be a gentle bubbling of the water, and nothing more, all the time the fish is in it, A fish weighing more than six pounds should cook five minutes longer for every additional two pounds. Boiled fish can be served with a great variety of sauces. After you have learned to make them (which is a simple matter), if you cannot get a variety of fish you will not miss it particularly, the sauce and mode of serving doing much to change the whole character of the dish. Many people put a table-spoonful of vinegar in the water in which the fish is boiled. The fish flakes a little more readily for it. Small fish, like trout, require from four to eight minutes to cook. They are, however, much better baked, broiled or fried.
Use cold fish and potatoes, if there are any in the larder; if not, boil a piece of blue smoked cod in some water for five minutes. Flake it up free from skin and bone and put it into a basin; mash up the potatoes and mix them in with the pepper and salt. Bind into a paste with an egg; rub some dripping on a baking sheet, turn the mixture on to it and shape into the letter S, brush over with egg or milk, and bake till brown. Slip it off on to a hot dish, and garnish with parsley.
Fillet the fish, put the bones in a saucepan, and just cover them with water. When they boil, skim well, and add the tomatoes sliced up, the peppercorns and vegetables; boil quickly without the lid for half an hour, then strain, rubbing the pulp of the tomatoes through with the liquor. Make a smooth sauce with half a pint of this liquor, the butter, and the flour; if the colour is not good add a few drops of cochineal. Fold the fillets of fish neatly, and bake in the oven with a little lemon juice, and covered with a buttered paper. Arrange them on a dish and pour the sauce over. Serve hot.
Soak herring a few hours, when washed and cleaned, bone and chop. To one herring take one onion, one sour apple, a slice of white bread which has been soaked in vinegar, chop all these; add one teaspoon oil, a little cinnamon and pepper. Put on platter in shape of a herring with head at top and tail at bottom of dish, and sprinkle the chopped white of a hard-boiled egg over fish and then the chopped yolk.
Score the fish on the back with a knife, and season them with salt and cayenne pepper. Cut some small onions in round slices, and chop fine a bunch of parsley. Put some butter into a frying-pan over the fire, and when it is boiling hot lay in the fish. When they are about half done put the onions and parsley into the pan. Keep turning the fish that the onions and parsley may adhere to both sides. When quite done, put them into the dish in which they are to go to table, and garnish the edge of the dish with hard boiled eggs cut in round slices. Make in the pan in which they have been fried, a gravy, by adding some butter rolled in flour, and a small quantity of vinegar. Pour it into the dish with the fish.
