Original White House Cookbook

a large onion, fry in butter, chop fine ; add the bread, two ounces of butter, salt, pepper and a little parsley or sage ; heat through, and when taken off the fire, add the yolks of two well-beaten eggs ; stuff the fish rather full, sew up with fine twine, and wrap with several coils of white tape. Rub the fish over slightly with butter ; just cover the bottom of a baking pan with hot water, and place the fish in it, standing back upward, and bent in the form of an S. Serve with the following dressing : Reduce the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a smooth paste with two tablespoonfuls good salad oil ; stir in half a teaspoon English mustard, and add pepper and vinegar to taste. HALIBUT BOILED. The cut next to the tail piece is the best to boil. Rub a little salt over it, soak it for fifteen minutes in vinegar and cold water, then wash it and scrape it until quite clean ; tie it in a cloth and boil slowly over a moderate fire, allowing seven minutes’ boiling to each pound of fish ; when it is half-cooked, turn it over in the pot ; serve with drawn butter or egg sauce. Boiled halibut minced with boiled potatoes and a little butter and milk makes an excellent breakfast dish. STEAMED HALIBUT. Select a three-pound piece of white halibut, cover it with a cloth and place it in a steamer ; set the steamer over a pot of fast-boiling water and steam two hours ; place it on a hot dish surrounded with a border of parsley and serve with egg sauce. FRIED HALIBUT. No. 1. Select choice, firm slices from this large and delicate looking fish, and, after carefully washing and drying with a soft towel, with a sharp knife take off the skin. Beat up two eggs and roll out some brittle crackers upon the kneading board until they are as fine as dust. Dip each slice into the beaten egg, then into the cracker crumbs (after you have salted and peppered the fish), and place them in a hot frying pan half full of boiling lard, in which a little butter has been added to make the fish brown nicely ; turn and brown both sides, remove from the frying pan and drain. Serve hot. FRIED HALIBUT. No. 2. First fry a few thin slices of salt pork until brown in an iron frying pan ; then take it up on a hot platter and keep it warm until the halibut is fried. Alter washing and drying two pounds of sliced halibut, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, dredge it well with flour, put it into the hot porkdrippings and fry brown on both sides ; then serve the pork with the fish. Halibut broiled in slices is a very good way of cooking it, broiled the same as Spanish mackerel. BAKED HALIBUT. . Take a nice piece of halibut weighing five or six pounds and lay it in salt water for two hours. Wipe it dry and score the outer skin. Set it in a dripping-pan in a moderately hot oven and bake an hour, basting often with butter and water heated together in a saucepan or tin cup. When a fork will penetrate it easily, it is done. It should be a fine, brown color. Take the gravy in the dripping-pan, add a little boiling water, should there not be enough, stir in a tablespoonful of walnut catsup, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, the juice of a lemon, and thicken with brown flour, previously wet with cold water. Boil up once and put in a sauce boat. HALIBUT BROILED.