Beyond the Branzino: Rediscovering 8 Retro Fish Dishes That Time Forgot

Looking back, we can see the foods that our grandparents ate. What we see today was different a long time ago. Nowadays, people seem to enjoy trendy seafood. But in the past, there were dishes that were forgotten by others. The disappearance of these foods wasn’t because of the fish, it’s just that changing tastes just made them disappear, they just faded from popularity over the years.

Let’s explore the old time cooking with the outstanding dishes that we can find now. They once reigned supreme on the menu, but most of them are now gone. Vintage fish food seems to be really creative and sometimes it feels very bold.

1. **Shrimp cream puff**: Shrimp is still a favorite today and can be found in many different meals. But it is unusual to see cooked shrimp in a pastry, but home cooks used to take the time to make these. They called it Shrimp cream puff, which used to be a party treat.

It’s basically a grilled shrimp salad. It’s served in a light puff pastry shell. Imagine chopped cocktail shrimp inside. There were mushrooms and things like that in there, and onions and celery were often put in there as well. They’re baked in these airy shells and eaten like little sliders.

Looking up recipes online seems to yield very few results, which obviously proves that they are no longer in use. If you have your parents’ old books, maybe you can find a recipe for this forgotten but once popular snack there.

2. **Baked stuffed fish**: Today’s stuffed fish is usually made from a whole fish, which may be filled before baking. But it was different years ago, when rolled fillets were usually the main course, and this was a dish prepared for a dinner party.

It looks like a small seafood roll. Preparing it does require patience, many steps and a steady hand. The thin fillets of fish are wrapped in a stuffing which uses vegetables and savory things, breadcrumbs or cheese are often put in it as well.

Rolled fish pieces are baked for about 15 minutes. The high temperature is important for this dish, which is finished with a little drizzle of lemon juice. White fish like sole work best for this dish; they bend and flavor nicely. Some versions also use crabmeat or bacon.

3. **Sole souffle**: Making a perfect Sole souffle is quite difficult. Now, imagine adding fish to a fluffy dish. Gone today is the practice of breaking fish into fluffy eggs.

This recipe says to mix the fillets well, and then the fish is stirred into the eggs and cream as well. To make the fillets smooth, they also had to be strained through a sieve. This shows that cooking was very elaborate back then.

Small cups, called ramekins, were needed for baking. the light fish mixture was then soaked in hot water. This technique, known as a “warm water bath”, helps the baking. It needs to be baked slowly over a low heat for 30 minutes, during which you can see the top rise and turn golden brown, after which it is served with a caramelized sauce or a cream sauce. Sole soufflé mixes the flavor of fish with a fluffy texture, it’s a strange blend of sensations and flavors.

4. **Pickled herring in wine sauce**: Canned fish has recently come back into vogue, with people saving it for quick meals or picnics. But in fact families used to make complete dishes from canned goods.

Pickled herring was popular for centuries because it was cheap and easy to preserve. The flavor of the dish is a mixture of mostly salt and vinegar, with the addition of dill to allow the fish to pickle. The pickled fish was usually refrigerated overnight. At the time, this dish was often made in Jewish-American homes, especially during holiday celebrations. Homemade dill wine sauce seems to be less and less common these days, and is now more often seen in jars.

Fish cold-cured in wine sauce is just that, taken out of the refrigerator and served chilled. It is basically served as a snack before the main meal or as part of an appetizer at the table. These tossed fish can be taken from the plate and eaten, or served on crackers. This shows that the cured food has received an advanced treatment.

5. **Coulibiac**: Coulibiac is like a big fish pasta shell. It’s actually a giant pierogi, so to speak, and it’s usually filled with rice and hard-boiled eggs. All of this is wrapped in a thin puff pastry, and the whole thing is big enough to serve on a table.

The pastry is not filled with meat and mushrooms like you see in Wellington. It’s packed with grain baked fish, usually salmon meat. There’s also eggs with vegetables and sometimes beets. It’s said to have originally originated in Russia. But the French make a prettier version. The dish is famous outside of its homeland as well.

This is another forgotten dish that is prepared for parties. The ingredients are plentiful, so it’s a lot of work, but you can make it a day in advance. I think this dish deserves to be reintroduced. Maybe platforms like Instagram can help bring it back as the dish doesn’t seem to have any weird old ingredients.

6. **Sand Dabs**: Sand Dabs are a very small halibut, a fillet may only weigh three ounces, so it takes a few small pieces to prepare one serving, which are placed on a plate like mini fish sticks.

The dish used to be a classic and was always served at Los Angeles’ Musso and Frank’s. That restaurant opened in 1919. The standard way to prepare this dish is to toss the fish in a sauce. The sauce was simple, made with white wine and capers. Parsley was also added to the sauce. However, sardines are no longer popular.

Perhaps it is because people prefer large fillets, whereas sardines come in many small pieces. Still, sardines are in line with current tastes. Fish coated in a few breadcrumbs with a simple sauce is great. Strangely, this standard fish dish has disappeared.

7. **Deviled crab**: Years ago, “deviled” meant spicy hot. Today, it primarily refers to the fried egg on the plate. Again, this is a classic dish at picnics and parties. Mixing the ingredients with hard-boiled eggs is an ancient practice, but the southern U.S. version is now famous.

The dish likely comes from a mixed culture, like Cuban Spanish mixed with Italian. The earliest recipe seems to have come from Tampa, Fla. A community of workers set up a cigar factory there, and the result was a delicious fried dab. It had crab meat and chili peppers, you know. It also seems to have mayonnaise and mustard in it, and the eggs hold them together nicely. Some people also put the mixture delicately back into the crab shell, and the dish is now largely regional. You can find it in the southern United States.

8. **Picnic loaf**: Perhaps the strangest old seafood meal of all time is this one. The picnic bread looks totally wild. You hardly ever see it outside these days. This dish uses a whole loaf of white bread, which is hollowed out.

Picnic bread seems to use gelatin a lot. Many of the delicious gelatin foods are now gone. The bread is stuffed with all sorts of things, usually canned tuna, peas, potatoes, carrots and hard-boiled eggs.

The finished bread looked like a strange fruitcake. But this ancient artifact was usually required to be sliced and served, like a ready-made sandwich. In the United States in the middle of the last century, this dish was very popular. But the dish is now almost extinct.

Seeing these dishes feels like opening an ancient time capsule. They show us how much food flavors and cooking methods have changed. For many people, what used to be common food is now becoming strange. But these lost foods remind us that cooking is always changing. Trends in the food world come and go. It makes you wonder what we eat now that people won’t know later.

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