Miles busied himself in the miniature galley, and soon had fried them up a "mess" of catfish, caught that morning and kept all day on ice whose melting had been retarded by the frigidity of altitude.
* * * * * * * * * *
Notice they're eating catfish which had been caught that morning? That's because they came up from the South, remember?!
As to why the word "mess" is in quotation marks? Your guess probably isn't as good as mine but I must admit I have nothing but guesses. Perhaps it's because one of the meanings of "mess" is "a portion or serving of liquid or pulpy food." And since catfish is neither of those, Pynchon is acknowledging the use of "mess" as a bit of a misnomer. It also simply means a "serving of food or a meal," especially, as in the time of our story, in a military sense. Perhaps that's also why it's in quotes, because the Chums aren't exactly military but act quite like a unit.
But penultimately, I believe we are to understand it here as "a whole lot of catfish." Perhaps this was a new use of the word around 1893, just as Pynchon earlier used "rookie," a newish word in 1893 and one which Pynchon put in quotation marks to signify its use as slang.
Ultimately, I really have no clue why it's in quotation marks! I can't get hung up on one word when I've got one thousand pages of multiple words to get through! At the rate I'm doing these blog entries, it'll take me fourteen years to finish this book!
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