Take up the fish and keep hot while you strain the gravy left in the pan, rubbing the tomatoes and pepper through a colander; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, add a teaspoonful of sugar and two of onion juice, with hot water if too thick; boil one minute; pour half over the fish, the rest into a sauce-boat.
Muskelonge
The coarse pickerel of the northern rivers and lakes are very nice, cooked as above directed. Bluefish may be treated in the same way.
Baked shad
Wash and wipe a large shad. Make a stuffing of fine breadcrumbs mixed with melted butter, a little minced onion, pepper and salt to taste. Fill the fish with this and sew it up. Lay it in a baking-pan and pour over it a cupful of salted boiling water in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been melted. Sprinkle the fish with flour and bake in a steady oven. Baste with the drippings every ten minutes. At the end of three-quarters of an hour try the fish with a fork to see if it is done. It should be very tender. Transfer carefully to a hot platter, cut and remove the strings. Keep the fish hot while you make the sauce.
Set on the top of the range the pan in which the fish has been baked. Thicken the fish drippings with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water. Stir until smooth, then add a cupful of boiling water, the juice of a lemon, a tablespoonful of good table sauce and a teaspoonful of good kitchen bouquet. Unless the sauce is perfectly smooth, strain through a wire sieve. Pour into a heated gravy-boat.
Boiled fresh codfish
Lay the fish in salt and water for an hour before cooking. Choose a “chunky” piece, as nearly square as you can get it. Sew up in white mosquito netting fitted to the shape of the fish. Put on in enough boiling water to cover it, adding four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, and cook steadily ten minutes to the pound. Unwrap the fish and pour over it half of the sauce described below, putting the rest into a gravy-boat.