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Boiled Fresh Cod
Put the fish in fish-kettle (or tie up in cloth) in boiling water with some salt and scraped horse-radish, let simmer till done, place a 'folded napkin on a dish, turn fish upon it, and serve with drawn butter, oyster or egg-sauce. When cold, chop fine, pour over it drawn butter or egg-sauce, and add pepper to taste, warm thoroughly, stirring to prevent burning, make up in rolls or any other form, and brown before the fire.
A plain poached cod with a second life as a warmed hash. Two things carry the dish: water that never actually boils, and a sauce made properly.
- Never let it boilDespite the title, hard boiling shreds cod into cotton. Bring the water to a boil, add the fish, then drop the heat so the surface barely trembles at around 175F.
- "Till done"Figure roughly 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare simmer, or until the flesh flakes at the thickest point and reads about 145F. Time by thickness rather than by weight.
- Fish kettle or clothA fish kettle is a long lidded pan with a perforated lifting rack. Without one, wrap the fish in cheesecloth leaving long ends as handles, or use a wide deep skillet and lift with two spatulas; cod falls apart the moment you try to pour it out.
- Drawn butterIn this period drawn butter is not clarified butter but a simple white sauce: about 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour, and a cup of hot water or fish liquor, whisked smooth and seasoned. Egg sauce is the same with two chopped hard-boiled eggs stirred in.
- Salt and horse-radishThe cooking water should be assertively salted, roughly 1 tablespoon per quart, which seasons the fish from the outside in. Fresh grated horseradish sharpens the liquid; the jarred kind, packed in vinegar, will do but use less.
- The folded napkinA linen napkin under the fish soaks up the water that keeps weeping out of poached cod, so the platter does not turn into a puddle. Any clean cloth or a folded tea towel works; parchment is the modern shortcut.
- The cold-fish second courseThe latter half is a leftovers dish. Flake the cold cod, bind it with the leftover sauce, season, warm it gently, then shape into rolls or cakes.
- "Brown before the fire"That means an open hearth or a tin reflector oven. Use a broiler a few inches from the element, or a 450F oven, until the tops are speckled brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. A 3 lb piece of cod will serve roughly four to six; whatever is left over goes to the warmed rolls.
Cod was the workhorse fish of nineteenth-century American kitchens, salted for the interior and sold fresh where ice and rail reached, and Buckeye Cookery (1877, compiled from contributions by Ohio housewives) treats it as a matter of course even a long way from salt water. The method here is old and English in outline: fish simmered in salted water, sent to table on a folded napkin, and dressed with drawn butter or egg sauce, which were among the usual sauces for boiled fish on ordinary American tables of the period. What marks the entry as a thrift-minded household book rather than a restaurant manual is the second half, which assumes the cook will have cold fish left and tells her what to do with it, in the same paragraph, without a separate heading.