Parboil 1 cup of shredded codfish; heat 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; add 1 chopped onion and 2 cups of tomatoes; let fry. Add 1 tablespoonful of flour; stir until thickened. Then add 1 cup of water, pepper and chopped parsley; let boil well; add the codfish. Let simmer one-half hour. Serve on buttered toast.
A salt-cod supper dish of the kind that filled Friday menus in American households a century ago. The recipe assumes you know what "shredded codfish" meant in 1908: dried salt cod, sold in boxes already picked into flakes.
- The fish"Shredded codfish" is salt cod, not fresh. Boxed shredded salt cod is still sold in some markets; otherwise buy a piece of dried salt cod and flake it after soaking. A cup of the dry shreds swells considerably once soaked.
- Parboil means desaltParboil means freshen -- The recipe's single word "parboil" stands in for drawing the salt out: cover the fish in cold water, change the water once or twice, then bring it just to a simmer and drain. Boxed shredded cod was usually less heavily salted than a whole side, so taste as you go; without some freshening the sauce can come out very salty.
- TomatoesTwo cups most likely means canned tomatoes with their liquid, though fresh would work. Use canned whole or diced tomatoes, and taste before adding any salt of your own.
- Let fryThe onion and tomatoes want real time in the butter — ten minutes or so, until the tomato liquid has cooked down and thickened. The flour then goes into a fairly dry mixture, which is what keeps the sauce from tasting raw.
- The half-hour simmerSalt cod that has already been soaked and parboiled does not need thirty minutes more. Ten to fifteen is enough to marry the flavours; longer and the flakes disintegrate into the sauce.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for anywhere, which makes sense with salt cod. Pepper and parsley are the whole seasoning, though a Spanish version would not object to a little smoked paprika or a clove of garlic with the onion.
- YieldServes three or four over toast as a light supper. Toast a sturdy white bread and butter it while hot so it stands up to the sauce.
Salt cod on toast in tomato sauce is the American home-cookery cousin of Iberian dried-cod stews such as *bacalao a la vizcaína* -- dried cod stewed with onion and peppers, with tomato in many though not all versions -- and the "Spanish" in the title of this recipe does most of its work through the tomato and onion base rather than any particular regional origin. Dried salt cod was one of the great trans-Atlantic proteins of the age: cured on the Newfoundland and New England banks, shipped to Catholic Europe and the Caribbean, and sold back home in wooden boxes as pre-shredded flakes that needed no knife and kept well in a pantry. That convenience is why it turns up so often in books of this type, where a day-by-day calendar of dishes had to be answerable with whatever was on the shelf. Serving it on buttered toast, rather than with potatoes or chickpeas as a Spanish kitchen would, suggests an American adaptation.