Fish Caserole (1944)

Recipe by Charlotte AdamsCourse: MainCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Cooking time

40

minutes

From the St. Cloud Daily Times, May 19, 1944

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. Fish fillets: cod or any kind of fish (keep skin and bones aside)

• 2 cups Mashed potatoes

• 1/2 lb. Mushrooms

• 2 cups White sauce (described below)

• 1 Bay leaf

• 1 Carrot

• 1 Onion

• Few leaves of celery

• Salt & Pepper

• Dash of nutmeg

• Dash of paprika

• Chopped parsley (optional)

• 1/8 cup Sauterne*

Directions

• Boil the fish 10 minutes, adding skin and bones, bay leaf, carrot, onion, celery.
• Remove fish, throwing away skin and bones, and bay leaf. Reserve liquid with carrot, onion and celery in it.
• Make a white sauce with butter, flour and the reserved liquid of fish and milk. Add the wine if desired.
• Add spices and cooked mushrooms.
• Grease a baking dish, put the fish in, then cover with a layer of white sauce and repeat until all is used up.
• Top with a layer of mashed potatoes.
• Put in a moderate oven (375°) until potatoes are golden brown (30-40 minutes).
• Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.

Notes

• * Sauterne is a sweet white wine that is apparently rather expensive. Alternatives are available, and can be found with a simple internet search.

So many missing ingredients and steps. It kind of assumes you have mashed potatoes sitting around, and tells you to add cooked mushrooms without ever telling you to cook them. Not sure if I’d ever actually want to try this, but who knows?

The more I think about this, the more I believe that “1-3 cups of flour” was a misprint. 3 cups of flour will make you a loaf of bread, and even one cup would be excessive for a recipe like this. I’m pretty sure they meant 1/3 cup of flour, which still seems like a lot, but is a much more reasonable amount.

Clear Apple Jelly.–Pare and cut up five dozen large, juicy, acid apples; put them in a pan with as much water as will cover them, boil gently until soft, let them cool, then strain them through a jelly bag; put the juice in your preserving pan, and to each pint of juice put on pound of fine sugar, and the peel of two lemons; then boil it until it is reduced to the stiffness of calves’s foot jelly: skim it will; add the juice of a lemon.

So many questions! What are “acid apples?” What’s a “jelly bag?” What’s a “preserving pan?” And what’s “calve’s foot jelly??” –Ed.

Queen of Puddings.–One pint of bread crumbs, one quart sweet milk, four eggs, a lump of butter the size of a hickory nut. When the pudding is nearly done, spread a layer of any kind of stewed fruit over the top of it, and on the top of that, spread the whites of three eggs, beaten to a froth, with three tablespoonfuls of white sugar. Set it in the oven again, to stiffen the froth. Eat with cream and sugar.

Good Hams.–After the hams have been smoked, take them down and thoroughly rub the flash part with molasses, then immediately part apply ground of powdered pepper, by sprinkling on as much as will stick to the molasses, when they must be hung up again to dry. Hams treated in this manner will keep perfectly sweet for two or three years. This must be done before the fly deposits its egg, for after that is done nothing will stop their ravages.