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Cod Fish Balls
Three cups of mashed potatoes, one cup of cod-fish, two tablespoons melted butter; simmer the cod-fish on the back of the range until it is soft, then pick out the bones and chop; mix with the mashed potatoes and melted butter, make in little flat cakes and fry brown in hot lard. The addition of one egg well beaten is an improvement.
A New England breakfast staple built on salt cod, which the recipe assumes you keep on hand in a wooden box. The soaking and freshening step is the part the original leaves out, and it is the part that decides whether the cakes are edible.
- "One cup of cod-fish" means salt cod"One cup of cod-fish" almost certainly means dried salt cod rather than fresh fillet -- the instructions to simmer until soft and pick out the bones point that way. Soak it in several changes of cold water for 8 to 12 hours before you go near the heat, or the finished cakes will be too salty to eat. A cup of picked, flaked fish corresponds very roughly to a few ounces of dry salt cod before soaking; judge by the flaked volume rather than the dry weight.
- "The back of the range"The coolest part of a wood or coal stove top, used for long gentle holding. On a modern burner this is the lowest setting, or water held just below a simmer at about 180F. Salt cod boiled hard turns stringy and tough.
- PotatoesUse dry, floury potatoes (russets) mashed without milk or cream. Wet mash makes cakes that slump and absorb frying fat. Three cups of mash is about 1.5 lb of potatoes.
- The hinge: get the mixture drySqueeze the soaked fish out by hand and let the potatoes steam dry in the pan for a minute after mashing. Excess moisture is the commonest reason these fall apart in the fat.
- Lard and panAny neutral fat with a high smoke point works. Shallow-fry in about a quarter inch at 360-375F, undisturbed, until a firm brown crust forms before turning. Fry in batches; crowding drops the temperature.
- The eggWorth adding, as the original suggests. It binds the cakes and lets you make them slightly thinner without losing them. One egg is right for this quantity.
- SeasoningNo pepper or salt is mentioned. Taste the mixture before shaping, since the salt level depends entirely on how long the fish soaked.
- YieldAbout twelve 3-inch cakes, enough for four to six at breakfast. Often eaten with baked beans; a poached egg or ketchup alongside is a common modern serving.
Salt cod was central to the economy of the New England coast long before it was breakfast: dried in the sun on Marblehead and Gloucester flakes, shipped to the Caribbean and southern Europe, and kept at home as one of the cheaper proteins in the pantry. Because it stored well and needed only an overnight soak, it suited a household that lit the range early, and fish balls or cakes eaten with beans are associated with Saturday night and Sunday morning tables in the nineteenth century. Recipes like this one recur in cookbooks of the period with little variation, and the terse phrasing here assumes what readers then knew and readers now do not: that the fish comes stiff as a board and must be freshened first. Commercially shredded boneless salt cod was sold in boxes from the later nineteenth century, which may be why the instruction to pick out the bones reads as a step for those still buying whole dried fish.