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Cod Pie, Salt
Soak the cod for twelve hours, and simmer it for a quarter of an hour. Cut it into pieces about two inches square. Take a deep pie-dish; place a layer of sliced potatoes, half boiled, at the bottom of the dish, then a layer of fish, then one of partly-boiled onions sliced. Put a little pepper and pounded mace on each layer, and a lump of butter, but, of course, no salt. Make some good melted butter, and mix with it a little made mustard, a table-spoonful of ketchup and a tea-spoonful of the essence of anchovies. Pour this over the pie, cover it with a good crust, and bake it in a brisk oven. Mashed potatoes may be spread over the top of the pie, instead of pastry, if preferred. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost of salt fish, 6d. per pound. Sufficient, a moderate-sized pie for three or four persons.
A Victorian salt-fish pie that depends almost entirely on how well the cod is desalted and on one term that no longer means what it says. Read the two notes on soaking and on "melted butter" before starting.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not butterIn British cookery books of this period melted butter means a flour-thickened butter sauce — roughly 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour and half a pint of water or milk, simmered smooth. Poured over the layers it binds the pie; plain liquid butter will separate and leave the filling dry.
- Soaking the codTwelve hours is a minimum for hard salt cod. Soak in the refrigerator in a large volume of cold water and change the water three or four times; taste a flake before you commit it to the pie. The instruction to add no salt anywhere is not optional.
- The simmerA quarter of an hour suits thick, properly dried salt cod, which is tough. Modern lightly salted or wet-salted fillets from a supermarket will fall apart in that time — five to eight minutes at a bare simmer is enough, and the fish should be just opaque since it bakes again.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 425F/220C, which is about right for a pastry lid; with the mashed-potato topping a slightly lower setting, around 400F/200C, browns the top without drying it.
- KetchupIn Victorian Britain an unqualified "ketchup" is mushroom or walnut ketchup — thin, dark, salty and savoury, closer to Worcestershire sauce than to tomato. A tablespoon of mushroom ketchup or a scant teaspoon of Worcestershire is nearer the intended flavour than tomato ketchup.
- Essence of anchoviesA concentrated anchovy extract, sold bottled. Anchovy paste, or a couple of oil-packed fillets mashed to nothing, stands in for the teaspoonful. Bear in mind it carries salt of its own.
- Pounded maceBlade mace ground fine; ready-ground mace works, and about a quarter teaspoon spread over the layers is plenty. Nutmeg is a near relation but sweeter and heavier-handed.
- Par-cooking the layersHalf-boiled potatoes and partly boiled onions are essential — three-quarters of an hour at 425F will not cook raw potato through under a sealed crust. Slice both about a quarter-inch thick.
- YieldAs stated, three or four servings from a moderate-sized deep pie dish. Salt cod is filling; a green vegetable is the only accompaniment it needs.
Salt cod was the everyday fish of inland Britain long before refrigeration, cheap, long-keeping, and strongly associated with Lent and with Fridays. Cassell's quotes it at sixpence a pound, which puts it among the cheaper proteins, and the pie is built accordingly: potatoes and onions do the bulk of the work, with mustard, ketchup and anchovy essence supplying the savour the fish itself loses in soaking. That trio of bottled condiments is very much of the period — the Victorian store cupboard leaned hard on commercial sauces, and a household manual could assume a bottle of mushroom ketchup and one of anchovy essence on the shelf. The alternative mashed-potato topping, offered almost in passing, makes the dish a first cousin to fish pie as it is still eaten in Britain today.