Old Trout Recipes

[Joshua Field]

I just came across some fun recipes in an old copy of "The New England Yankee Cookbook" (c. 1939) that are worth sharing:

"TROUT OVER A CAMPFIRE
Sharpen a hardwood stick and push it down the backbone to the tiny fatty fin near the tail. Push the other end of the stick into the earth close to the embers. Cook until done.

BAKED LAKE TROUT
Remove skin; also fat along backbone. Split, clean and stuff. Lay in pan with a little milk. Lay strips of fat pork across and bake about one hour in a moderate oven (375 degrees). Before removing from the oven, add 1 1/2 cups of cream. Heat and serve.

Stuffing:
2 cups fine bread crumbs
4 table spoons butter
1 teaspoon of sage
1 small onion, finely cut
1 teaspoon of salt
Pepper
Mix all together


PAN FRIED BROOK TROUT
Remove eyes and scales; make an incision down the underneath side and clean carefully. Wash fish and roll in equal parts of yellow cornmeal and flower sifted together. Preheat salt pork fat or bacon fat in a skillet. Add the fish and cook four minutes. Cover and cook about 2 minutes longer. Remove cover, brown on both sides. Remove to hot platter, garnish with lemon, cress or parsley and serve hot.

No fish, probably, is more fitted to grace a silver platter, garnished with yellow half moons of lemon and crisp cress than eastern brook trout, which is equally at home pan fried or broiled over the embers of a fisherman's campfire where it's tantalizing odor drifts away to blend with the spice of balsam thickets."

[Joshua Field]

Another fun, but unrelated quote re: our beloved clam chowder:

"The raging clam chowder controversy which has continued almost uninterruptedly in New England for generations centers on the use of tomatoes as an ingredient in its preparation. Rhode Island and Connecticut housewives uphold the tomato. The rest of New England scorn it. A Maine politician claims the addition of tomato to clam chowder "is the work of reds" who seek to undermine "our most hallowed tradition," and suggests that all housewives and chefs adding tomato be forced "to dig a barrel of clams at high tide" as a penalty.

[Joshua Field]

One more great snippet from the book, this time about how the haddock got its stripes:

"It is said that fisherman originally believed the cod became "the sacred cod" because it was the fish that Christ used when He multiplied the fish and fed the multitude, and even today the marks of His thumbs and forefingers are plainly visible on the codfish. His satanic majesty stood by and said he, too, could multiply fish and feed multitudes. Reaching for one of the fish, it wriggled and slid through his red hot fingers, burning two black striped down its side and thus clearly differentiating the haddock from the sacred cod."