Creamed Codfish

Soak the salted fish in cold water. Pull it apart with knife and fork. Put it in a saucepan of cold water, allow the water to heat slowly, and stop the heating just before the water reaches the boiling point. Pour off the water, shake the saucepan over the fire, add a thin butter sauce, and reheat. Serve on toast, if you wish.

Baked Fish

Almost any medium-sized fish is suitable for baking. Clean the fish, seeing that all scales are removed. Stuff and sew. Shape with skewers to form a letter S and place upright on a baking pan or lay the fish on its side. If the fish is not fatty, put strips of salt pork over it, and in the pan, or cut gashes in the fish and lay strips of pork in them. Dredge with flour. Bake one hour for a three-pound fish, pouring the fat in the pan over it, once in a while. Serve with butter sauce or plain.

The stuffing can be made of bread crumbs moistened slightly with water and seasoned with salt and a teaspoonful of dried herbs. It is not necessary, however, to use it.

Another way of baking a fish is to put slices cut from a large fish, in a greased pan, covering the fish with milk and letting it bake slowly for about half an hour, or until the flesh loosens from the bones. Cover the fish during the first half of the cooking, and then remove the cover and sprinkle the fish with crumbs. If the fish is baked in an earthen dish, serve it in the same dish.

Canned Oysters Creamed

Open the can and wash off the oysters in a colander or strainer. Make a thin butter sauce, seasoning with celery salt or celery leaves. When the sauce is done, heat the oysters in it for a minute, and serve on toast.

Canned Salmon Creamed

Open the can, pick over the salmon, being careful to remove the bones. Let it air for an hour or so and serve in a hot sauce as you would the oysters.

Butter Sauce

What and how much.

Milk, cold

Water, hot

Butter or beef fat

Flour

Pepper

Salt

I cup

1 cup

2 tablespoonfuls 2 tablespoonfuls 1/8 teaspoonful

1/8 teaspoonful

How to make. Melt the butter in a saucepan; let it bubble but not burn; add the flour, salt and pepper; mix well; add all of the milk cold; and stir steadily until the mixture thickens. Pour in the hot water slowly, stirring all the time. To keep sauce hot, cover and set it over hot water.

All sauces may be made in the same way, with other liquids to take the place of milk, - tomato juice, for instance. Onions, if used, should be cut fine and browned in part of the butter before the flour is added.

Fish And Clam Chowder

This can be made with fresh clams or canned clams, fresh fish or salt fish. If the salt fish is used, it should be soaked before it is put into the chowder.

What and how much.

Clams or fish in pieces

Potatoes

Onion

Salt

Pepper

Butter or pork

Milk

Soda crackers

1 quart

4 cups, cut in thick slices

1 chopped

1 tablespoonful

1/8 teaspoonful

4 tablespoonfuls

6 cups, scalded

How to make. If clams are used, clean and pick them over, cut off the hard part, chop, and strain the clam liquor. Or if you are using fish, cut it into pieces. Try out a little pork in a large kettle and fry the onion in it. If it is a clam chowder, cook the potatoes first and drain. Then put into the kettle layers of clams, potatoes, and crackers; add the milk and butter; cook for three minutes; and add the clam liquor hot. If it is a fish chowder, put the potatoes in raw with the fish and cook the chowder half an hour. With pork, omit butter.

The Luncheon Club made this chowder at school one day in the fall on a fire built out of doors, for the smell of fish in the schoolroom is not very pleasant. Of course, the canned salmon could be used for a luncheon dish at school, as it is already cooked.

What is the value of fish as food? Fish is one of the meat substitutes. People who live on the coast can make it their chief animal food. It costs somewhat less than meat, at least in some places. When we can, we should use it at least two or three times a week for one meal or another. It is just about as digestible as meat, although some of the oily fish, like herring, mackerel, salmon, and shad, are a little more difficult of digestion than cod or haddock. We must not think of fish as a "brain food." Some people used to say that it was good for the brain because it contained phosphorus, but fish has no more phosphorus than some other food, and the brain has no more need of phosphorus than have other parts of our body.