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?

When reading the papers, I will sometimes look up the names mentioned in the articles, and so I looked up George Harsh. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He wound up getting his death sentence commuted to hard labor. While in prison he saved the life of a fellow inmate by performing an appendectomy (there’s a story I’d love to hear), and was released after serving 12 years.

After drifting for a few years he emigrated to Canada where, during WWII, he joined the Canadian Air Force, serving as a tail gunner. His plane was shot down and he was captured by the Germans. In 1944 he helped 126 Allied prisoners tunnel out of Stalag 3. You might remember that caper from a little movie they made about it called “The Great Escape.”

In 1971 he wrote a book called Lonesome Road and became an anti-capital punishment advocate.

He went from teenage thrill killer to war hero to author and activist, and died in 1980.

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.

It is generally believed in Boston now that the Governor and Council will eventually commute the sentence of Jesse Pomeroy to imprisonment for life. Common people who read the newspapers have a vague sort of information concerning this young fiend’s exploits, but probably very few of them, if called upon, could mention a single case of cruelty except the murder of the boy Millen, for which Pomeroy is now under sentence of death. A list of Pomeroy’s crimes appears in the Boston Globe of Saturday. On Feb. 21, 1872, Pomeroy assaulted Tracy Hayden, stripped him naked, tied him to a tree, broke the bridge of his nose, and inflicted other serious injuries; on July 4, 1872, he stripped, gagged and beat Johnny Balch, and washed salt water in the wounds; in September, 1872, he tied Robert Gould to a telegraph pole, and cut him about the head with a penknife; in August, of the same year, Harry Austin, George Pratt, and Joseph Kennedy were maltreated in the same manner. These crimes all preceded the murder of Katie Curran, which was discovered after the Millen murder, but occurred before it. Perhaps the career of this boy Pomeroy has been sufficiently moralized upon; it has now become a subject of study for the pathologist and the metaphysician.

(Jesse Pomeroy was 14 years old when he was sentenced to death. He was 16 when his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died in prison in 1932 at the age of 72. –Ed.)

NATIONAL NEWS

Judge Nelson, of the United States District Court, gave an opinion at Winona Tuesday affirming the constitutionality of the Civil Rights act.

On Thursday, the day appointed by Gov. Hardin, of Missouri, for fasting and prayer for relief from the grasshopper scourge, the ‘hoppers gathered up their traps and sailed over into Kansas.

While the tax on whisky in this country is 90 cents per gallon, in Great Britain it is $2.83 per gallon. But what better could you expect of a “blasted monarchy” whose aim is to crush out the liberties of the people?

While there is a wide diversity of opinion among the newspapers concerning the precise meaning of the President’s third-term letter, there seems to be a very general belief that it will completely remove him from the field as a candidate for renomination.

(Grant considered running for a third term, something that had never happened before, but vetoed the idea. The whole affair is the origin of the Elephant and Donkey symbols of the Republican and Democratic parties that are still used to this day. –Ed.)

Last week’s Le Sueur Courier comes to us with a thrilling editorial “leader,” headed: “The Grasshopper Raid.–A Determined and Successful Fight–Over 99 Bushels in Three Days!” The village authorities offer a reward of 20 cents per quart to June 10th and after that 15 cents per quart for all grasshoppers caught within the limits of the town. The County Commissioners of Blue Earth county are also after scalps, and offer a reward of 10 cents per quart of grasshoppers.

Up to noon Tuesday 2,500 bushels of grasshoppers had been caught in Blue Earth county and paid for.–The price has been reduced to five cents per quart, and the ‘hoppers are leaving. The war will be continued until they all clear out or are exterminated.