Standard Paper-Bag Cookery

Fish Cakes.— Use for this two cupfuls cold fish freed from skin and bones and chopped fine, and the same amount of cooked, seasoned and mashed potatoes. Mix well, season with salt and pepper, add two tablespoonfuls vegetable oil or melted butter and two tablespoonfuls of milk. Whip the mixture until as "light as feathers." Shape into small, flat cakes of even size. Beat up an egg on a plate, then egg the cakes and roll deftly in the finest of sifted bread crumbs and again shape. Put in well greased bag, seal and put in a hot oven. Cook about twenty minutes. New England Fish Pie. — Have a pound of cod steak boned and cut in pieces. Roll each piece in slightly salted flour, and season with paprika or white pepper. Lay in the well-greased bag and put on top of the fish a layer of oysters with their juice and a squeeze of lemon juice. Sprinkle with a layer of finely rolled and buttered cracker crumbs, dot with a few bits of butter, seal the bag and bake slowly fifteen minutes. Have ready some hot mashed potato well seasoned with cream and butter. Take the grid and bag from the oven, tear off the top of the bag, spread the potato over the fish like a crust, brush over with a little milk mixed with a portion of an egg yolk and set back in oven for five minutes to brown and glaze, turning the grid with the bag twice during the cooking. Cut open the bag, put the fish balls on a hot platter, garnish and serve plain with a tomato sauce. Fish Souffle. — One pint of boiled halibut or other delicate fish, freed from bones and skin and mashed to a pulp. Season with one small teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper, and one teaspoonful of onion juice. Melt a large tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, and cook in it for three minutes a tablespoonful of flour. Add slowly a cupful of milk and the seasoned fish pulp. Beat two eggs thoroughly and add the fish to them. Pour all into bag, seal and bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven, half an hour. Planked Fish Bag-Cooked.— Planked fish responds beautifully to the paper-bag treatment, and there is no better way of developing the distinctive flavor of any of the delicate white-meated fish. The plank however should not be as thick as that usually required. It must be of hard-wood, hickory, cherry, live oak, cedar or ash — well seasoned and sawed about a half inch in thickness, rounded and tapered at one end like an ironing board. This to accommodate the tail of the fish. If cooking small fish use the oval wood cooking dishes made of maple wood. Make it very hot in the oven or under the gas flame, then grease well with vegetable oil, olive or the refined cotton seed, and lay on it the fish cleaned, split down the back, seasoned, oiled all over with the sweetest of vegetable oils or butter and spread out as flat as possible with the skin side next to the hot board. Slip into the greased bag and fasten tightly. If you use the gas oven for planking your fish, as most of us do, turn on both burners until the oven is very hot. Then set in the fish with a trivet under the bag the same as if you were cooking without the plank.