Line a buttered baking-dish with cold flaked fish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper; add a layer of cold cooked rice, dot with butter; repeat and cover with cracker or bread crumbs. Bake fifteen to twenty minutes.
Any remains of cold fish, such as cod or haddock, 2 dozen oysters, pepper and salt to taste, bread crumbs, sufficient for the quantity of fish; 1/2 teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, 1 teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley. Clear the fish from the bones, and put a layer of it in a pie-dish, which sprinkle with pepper and salt; then a layer of bread crumbs, oysters, nutmeg and chopped parsley. Repeat this till the dish is quite full. You may form a covering either of bread crumbs, which should be browned, or puff-paste, which should be cut off into long strips, and laid in cross-bars over the fish, with a line of the paste first laid round the edge. Before putting on the top, pour in some made melted butter, or a little thin white sauce, and the oyster-liquor, and bake. Time.--If of cooked fish, 1/4 hour; if made of fresh fish and puff-paste, 3/4 hour.
Mackerel cannot be eaten in perfection except at the sea-side, where it can be had immediately out of the water. It loses its flavour in a very few hours, and spoils sooner than any other fish. Broiling is the best way of cooking it. Clean two fine fresh mackerel, and wipe them dry with a cloth. Split them open and rub them with salt. Spread some very bright coals on the hearth, and set the gridiron over them well greased. Lay on the mackerel, and broil them very nicely, taking care not to let them burn. When one side is quite done, turn them on the other. Lay them, on a hot dish, and butter and pepper them before they go to table. Garnish them with lumps or pats of minced paisley mixed with butter, pepper and salt.
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.
One dozen thoroughly cleaned birds; stuff each with an oyster, put them into a yellow dish, and add two ounces of boiled salt pork and three raw potatoes cut into slices; add a pint of oyster liquor, an ounce of butter; salt and pepper; cover the dish with a crust and bake in moderate oven.
One pint of milk, one pint of cream, four table-spoonfuls of flour, one cupful of bread crumbs and between four and five pounds of any kind of white fish--cusk, cod, haddock, etc., boiled twenty minutes in water to cover and two table-spoonfuls of salt. Put fish on to boil, then the cream and milk. Mix the flour with half a cupful of cold milk, and stir into boiling cream and milk. Cook eight minutes and season highly with salt and pepper. Remove skin and bones from fish, and break it into flakes. Put a layer of sauce in a deep escalop dish, and then a layer of fish, which dredge well with salt (a table- spoonful) and pepper; then another layer of sauce, again fish, and then sauce. Cover with the bread crumbs, and bake half an hour. This quantity requires a dish holding a little over two quarts, or, two smaller dishes will answer. If for the only solid dish for dinner, this will answer for six persons; but if it is in a course for a dinner party, it will serve twelve. Cold boiled fish can be used when you have it. Great care must be taken to remove every bone when fish is prepared with a sauce, (as when it is served à la crème, escaloped, &c.), because one cannot look for bones then as when the sauce is served separately.
Chop the fish, bacon, and parsley finely, and mix them together with the seasoning. Make a thick sauce with 1 gill water, 1 oz flour, and 1 oz butter; flavour with anchovy and stir the fish in. Simmer for a few minutes, stir in the yolk of the egg, and turn on to a plate to cool. Make up into small balls, fill a frying pan with boiling water, put in the balls. Cover over and simmer gently for ten minutes. Dish the balls in a circle and pour over the melted butter, which has been nicely flavoured with anchovy; garnish with parsley, and serve.
Mix some pepper, salt, and lemon juice together, and lay oysters in this. The bacon should be cut very thin, and then into strips about 1 inch broad and 3 inches long. Roll these up, and thread on a skewer first a roll of bacon and then an oyster, until the skewer is full; lay on a baking sheet and cook in the oven for about ten minutes. Have ready a hot dish, slip the bacon and oysters off the skewers on to this, and serve hot.
Put it into hot water, and boil gently for five minutes or longer if the fish is very thick. Take it out of water and put it on to a hot dish, rub a small piece of cold butter over it and cook for a few minutes either in the oven or in front of the fire. One or two soft boiled eggs broken over it is a nice way of serving it, or a few very thin slices of bacon well cooked may be placed round the dish as a garnish.
This is an essentially Flemish soup. One uses carp, eels, tench, roach, perches, barbel, for the real waterzoei is always made of different kinds of fish. Take two pounds of fish, cut off the heads and tails, which you will fry lightly in butter, adding to make the sauce a mixed carrot and onion, three cloves, a pinch of white pepper, a sprig of parsley, one of thyme, a bay-leaf; pour in two-thirds of water and one-third of white wine till it more than covers the ingredients and let it simmer for half- an-hour. Then the pieces of fish must be cut an equal size, and they are placed to cook quickly in this liquor for twenty minutes. Five minutes before serving add a lemon peeled and cut into slices and the pips removed. Some people bind the sauce with breadcrumbs grated and browned. You serve, with this dish, very thin slices of bread and butter. For English tastes, the heads and tails should be removed when dressing the dish.
