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Cod, Boiled
In cold weather cod is better for being kept a day, as, if cooked quite fresh, it may prove watery. A large cod-fish should not be cooked whole; the head and shoulders make a good dish by themselves, though the middle contains more solid meat. Wash and cleanse the inside of the fish with great nicety, and especially the backbone; put it into plenty of cold water, in which a handful of salt has been thrown, bring it to a boil, skim it carefully, let it boil gently, and, when it is nearly cooked, draw it to the side of the fire, and let it remain until done. Put it on the fish-plate over the boiling water, and let it drain for a minute or two, and dish it on a hot napkin, with the roe and liver, which should be boiled separately, a little scraped horse-radish, or fried oysters, as garnish. Oyster or anchovy sauce, or plain melted butter, may be served with it. Time to boil, twenty minutes for a moderate-sized piece, longer for a large one. When the flesh leaves the bone easily the fish is cooked enough. Probable cost, 8d. per pound. Sufficient, four pounds for six persons.
A Victorian household standard, and the method is sound apart from the timing. Treat it as poaching rather than boiling and the fish will hold together.
- Never let it boilKeep it barely simmering -- The recipe does say "let it boil gently", but the fish holds together far better at a bare tremble: bring the water just to a boil, then drop the heat at once. Drawing a pan "to the side of the fire" on a coal range achieved the same reduction in heat, though the book only does this towards the end of cooking. A rolling boil shreds the flakes apart and squeezes the flesh dry.
- Twenty minutes is too longTwenty minutes may be long -- Modern practice is roughly 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness in water held well below a simmer, so a thick 2-inch cut is in that same twenty-minute region while a thinner steak needs much less. Use the book's own test instead of the clock: the flesh should part from the bone cleanly.
- The salted water"Plenty of cold water" with "a handful of salt" is a lightly salted bath rather than a measured brine; the book gives no quantity for either. Starting in cold water is deliberate: it lets the fish heat evenly rather than seizing on the outside.
- Keeping it a dayThis advice belongs to a world of fish landed that morning, which the book says may cook watery. Fish bought from a modern counter has already had that day or more in transit; cook it as soon as you get it home.
- Fish-plate and kettleThe "fish-plate" is the perforated drop-in trivet of a fish kettle, used to lift the whole piece out unbroken. A wide deep sauté pan with a rack, or a length of doubled cheesecloth left overhanging as a sling, does the same job.
- "Melted butter"In Victorian usage this is not simply warmed butter but a flour-thickened butter sauce, close to a thin béchamel made with water or fish liquor. Oyster sauce is that base with poached oysters and their liquor stirred in at the end, off the heat, so they do not toughen.
- Roe and liverBoth are boiled separately here and served alongside. Cod roe is still sold, often already cooked; fresh liver is hard to find outside a fishmonger who breaks down whole fish, though it is sold tinned, and it can simply be left out.
- Yield and costFour pounds of bone-in fish for six people, which works out at roughly 6 oz of trimmed fillet each once the bone and skin are allowed for. The 8d. per pound is Victorian money and marks cod as everyday food rather than a luxury.
Boiled cod with oyster sauce was one of the fixed points of the middle-class English dinner: cheap, abundant from the North Sea, and -- being white and unassertive -- regarded as suitable for invalids and for fish days. The insistence on cleaning the backbone "with great nicety" reflects a period preoccupation with the blood line and dark membrane inside the cavity, which spoils quickly and was blamed for the muddy flavour of badly kept fish. The pairing with oysters, which now reads as extravagant, was ordinary economy for much of the nineteenth century, when London oysters were still cheap enough to be everyday food, though prices rose late in the century. Anchovy sauce was commonly built on bottled anchovy essence, one of the era's few concentrated savoury flavourings. The whole approach -- a large piece served on a folded napkin to absorb the water, with horseradish scraped over -- belongs to the older English tradition of plainly boiled fish dressed at the table rather than cooked in sauce.