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Cod, Crimped
Make some deep cuts as far as the bones on both sides of a perfectly fresh cod, making the cuts at two inches distance, and cut one or two gashes on the cheeks; then lay the fish in cold water, with a table-spoonful of vinegar in it, for an hour or two. It may afterwards be boiled or fried. If it is to be boiled, it should be plunged at once into boiling water, and then simmered gently. Crimping renders the flesh firmer, and makes it better both to cook and to serve.
Crimping is a preparation technique rather than a finished dish: scored, chilled fish that cooks up firm rather than flabby. It only works on fish that is genuinely just-caught, which is the hinge of the whole method.
- Freshness is not optionalCrimping relies on the muscle going into rigor while chilled, which is what firms the flesh. On fish that has been iced for several days the cuts do nothing useful, and the soaking only leaches flavour. If the cod is not extremely fresh, skip crimping and simply cook it.
- The cutsScore straight down to the bone at roughly two-inch intervals on both flanks, so the number of cuts depends on the length of the fish. On thick steaks or a loin section, two or three scores serve the same purpose.
- The soakCold water with a tablespoon of vinegar for one to two hours. Keep the bowl in the refrigerator, not on the counter, and use ice water. The Victorian kitchen had a cold larder; a modern room-temperature soak of two hours puts the fish squarely in the danger zone.
- Plunging into boiling waterThe sudden heat sets the surface proteins and keeps the flakes separate. Bring the water to a full boil, lower the fish in, then drop the heat immediately so it barely trembles. A rolling boil will tear a crimped fish apart along its own cuts.
- Cooking timeThe original gives none. Simmer roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness, measured at the thickest point; the flesh should just part from the bone. Food-safety guidance is to cook fish to an internal 145F.
- Salt the waterThe recipe says nothing about salt. Boiled fish wants water salted to about the strength of a light brine - roughly 2 tablespoons of salt per gallon - or the flesh tastes washed out after its soak.
- Frying the alternativeThe recipe allows frying as well as boiling. Pat thoroughly dry after the soak, or the retained water will spit in the fat and prevent browning.
- YieldA whole cod of 4-5 lb, crimped and boiled, serves six to eight; allow about 8 oz of bone-in fish per person.
Crimping was a standard trick of the English fish trade through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, applied chiefly to cod, skate and salmon landed at the quayside and sent to market. Fishmongers scored and chilled the fish while it was still stiffening, which arrests the flesh in a firm state and gives the characteristic clean, separating flakes; crimped cod and crimped skate appear on London menus of the period. The practice depended on speed from boat to slab, and it fell away with refrigeration and long-distance transport, which meant fish rarely reached the cook fresh enough for crimping to do anything. Cassell's includes it because it was assumed knowledge for anyone buying fish whole - a technique a competent housekeeper would recognise on the slab and might ask the fishmonger to perform.