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Cod and Parmesan Cheese
Take the remains of cold cod, remove the skin and bones, and break the flesh into convenient-sized but not very small pieces. Make a little good white sauce, warm the portions of cod in it, drain them, and dip each in beaten egg, bread-crumbs, and Parmesan cheese. Thicken the gravy with a little arrowroot or fine flour; keep it hot in the saucepan. Fry the pieces of fish in some hot butter until lightly browned, pour the sauce over them, and serve the whole as hot as possible. Time to fry, eight or ten minutes. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the cold fish. Sufficient, one pound and a half of fish for four or five persons.
A Victorian way of resurrecting leftover boiled cod: coat the cooked flakes, fry them, and sauce them. The whole thing hangs on whether the pieces hold together long enough to reach the pan.
- Chill the coated piecesWarming cooked cod in white sauce makes it fragile and slippery. Set the sauced pieces on a plate and refrigerate them for 20-30 minutes before egging and crumbing, and again after coating; cold, firm pieces survive the frying and hot ones fall apart.
- The coating orderMix the Parmesan into the breadcrumbs rather than applying it as a third separate layer — roughly one part grated Parmesan to three parts fine dry crumbs. Press it on firmly and let the coated pieces rest so it adheres.
- Eight to ten minutes is too longThe fish is already cooked; you are only browning the crust. Two to three minutes a side in hot butter is enough. Parmesan in the crumbs scorches quickly, so use clarified butter, or butter with a little neutral oil, over medium heat rather than high.
- Two sauces, one batchThe recipe works with a single batch of white sauce: the fish is warmed in it, drained, and that same liquid (the 'gravy') is then thickened with arrowroot or fine flour and poured over. The quantity is left as 'a little', so judge it by the amount of fish; if you prefer, thicken only part of it so the fish is not warmed in an over-stiff sauce.
- "Gravy" here means the sauceVictorian writers used 'gravy' loosely for cooking liquors as well as meat juices, and here it plainly means the sauce the fish was warmed in. Arrowroot gives a clearer, glossier finish than flour and needs only brief cooking, but prolonged boiling thins it again -- add it just below a simmer and keep the sauce hot rather than boiling.
- Sauce it at the tablePouring sauce over a fried crumb crust softens it within a minute. Spoon the sauce onto the plate and sit the fish on top, or bring the sauce separately, unless you want the wholly saucy effect the original intends.
- Yield and cost1½ lb of cooked cod for four or five, as stated — that is generous by modern portions and will serve four comfortably. The 8d. covers the eggs, crumbs, cheese and butter only; the fish was assumed to be already paid for at yesterday's dinner.
Cassell's — an attribution consistent with the 'Probable cost'/'Sufficient' formula, though not certain on the evidence of one page — belongs to the great age of English leftover cookery, when a large boiled cod appeared at dinner and its remains had to reappear in some new guise rather than be thrown out — the same impulse behind fish cakes, kedgeree and scalloped fish. Parmesan is doing specific work here: it was one of the few hard cheeses that travelled well and kept for long periods, and Victorian cookbooks reach for it constantly as a savoury seasoning, grated into macaroni, sprinkled over soups, worked into crumb coatings. Cod itself was among the common white fish of the period, cheap and abundant on the North Atlantic banks and carried inland by rail, which is why a dictionary of cookery could afford dozens of entries for it. The price given in pence, with the fish counted as free, is the tell: this is a recipe written for a household running accounts, where the cook was expected to know what each dish added to the week's bill.