Fish Dinners- Fish and Seafood Cookery 1949


Fish and Seafood Cookery is a vintage 1949 booklet I got recently. It has great period illustrations. One thing I find interesting is it was put out by the Mid-Central Fish Co. located in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. It must have been a large company. Somehow I don't think of fish as being a Midwestern thing to buy at the grocery store back then. I wonder how fresh is was by the time it was shipped in. Maybe they only sold frozen fish.
A theme through out the book is that fish can be enjoyed everyday of the week. "By using different methods, a variety of delicious fish dishes can be served several times weekly, and while giving your family new food sensations, you will also be sure of serving a truly balanced diet. I guess they were trying to dispel the fish on Friday idea. But health wise it sounds like something you would read nowadays. The booklet explains all the basic ways of cooking fish and then gives some recipes. Here are some of them:

Fish Fillets with Golden Sauce

2 pounds fish fillets
2 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup milk
1/4 cup grated yellow cheese
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 teaspoon scrapped onion
Salt and pepper
Dry fish; cut into serving pieces and roll in seasoned flour, then saute carefully until delicately browned. Place in a shallow, greased baking dish and cover with Golden Sauce: Blend flour with melted butter; add milk. Cook until thickened, then add vinegar, egg yolks, onion and seasonings. Sprinkle with grated cheese and brown in moderate over 350 degrees for about ten minutes. Serves six.

Fish Fillets en Turban

1 pound fish fillets
2 tablespoons grated onion
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons cooking fat
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 lightly beaten egg
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup flour
1 cup crushed corn flakes or other breading
Cut fish into 1- or 1 1/2 inch wide strips for rolling. Combine onion, butter, lemon juice and salt; brush over fish. Bread in usual manner and chill about 2 hours to set crust. Roll fish strips into turbans or pinwheels and skewer with toothpicks. Fry golden brown in hot fat but as usual avoid overcooking. Serve with tartar sauce of hot salad dressing. Serves 3 or 4.

3 comments:

Lidian said...

What a charming little picture! That sounds like a great find. The fish thing reminded me of "fawlty Towers' when Basil defends some ingredient someone's unhappy about because it was frozen something. He retorts "But it was fresh when it was frozen!"

T.W. Barritt at Culinary Types said...

I wonder where they were getting their fish in the midwest? Maybe the Great Lakes? I think you are right about the Friday fish thing - even then, companies were trying to change consumer behavior.

Anonymous said...

Those people look kinda creepy!