Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald

Good Every Way

Along the New England coast, it's the peak time of year for catching striped bass. Or if like us you're not that much into fishing, it's the season when you can be sure to find this delicious species at your local market. Back at the very beginnings of the English settlement of New England, in 1634, William Wood, in his book New Englands Prospect, wrote that "though men are soon wearied with other fish, yet they are never with Basse." Over two hundred years later, our good friend Catharine Beecher heartily agreed. "Bass are good every way," she said. Nowadays, one of the ways of cooking bass that people particularly like is grilling it on a cedar plank, as is also popular with salmon, and as we did, using a recipe from Mrs. Bliss, with haddock (see our blog post, "Scrod or Young Cod, Roasted"). Read More 

Scrod is most often broiled, so Mrs. Bliss's recipe for roasting it intrigued us. What would be the difference in taste between a nice piece of broiled scrod, as we've had any number of times at home and in restaurants, and roasted scrod? We were eager to find out.

But there was a prior question in need of an answer: What, exactly, is scrod? In our commentary on this recipe in Northern Hospitality, we discuss the word's etymology--few people have any idea what fish they're eating when they eat scrod, despite its enormous popularity in New England.  Read More