Baked Mackerel.
Prepare as for boiling. Make a dressing as for baked cod. Stuff with this; dredge with salt and flour. Bake thirty minutes, basting often with water, butter, and flour. Make a gravy with the water in the pan in which the fish is baked. Always make the gravy quite salt. The best way to cook mackerel is to broil it.
Smelts.
The only true way to cook smelts is to fry them, although they are sometimes baked. Open them at the gills. Draw each smelt separately between your finger and thumb, beginning at tail; this will press the insides out. (Some persons never take out the insides, but it should be done as much as to any other fish.) Wash them clean, and let them drain in a cullender; then salt, and roll in a mixture of half flour and half Indian meal. Have about two inches deep of boiling fat in the frying-pan (drippings, if you have them; if not, lard); into this drop the smelts, and fry brown. Do not put so many in that they will be crowded; if you do, they will not be crisp and brown.
Brook Trout.
Brook trout are cooked the same as smelts; or you can cook them as the angler does. They must be split nearly to the tail to clean. Wash and drain. For a dozen good sized trout, fry six slices of salt pork; when brown, take out the pork, and put in the trout. Fry a nice brown on all sides. Serve the pork with them.
Eels Fried.
Skin them; then turn on boiling water, and let them stand in it a few moments; then cut them into pieces about three inches long. Fry a nice brown, and serve.
Baked Eels.
Prepare as for frying; then put into a baking-pan, with a little water, flour, pepper, and salt. Bake twenty minutes. Make a gravy of the liquor in which they were baked, adding a little butter.