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Cod Roe Cutlets
Put a cod roe into a pan of salted boiling water, and cook it for five minutes. Then take it out and put it into cold water for a few minutes. To this water add a table-spoonful of vinegar and half a table-spoonful of salt, and boil the roe for thirty minutes. Then let it drain well and get cold. Cut it into slices about half an inch thick, trim them neatly, brush them over with beaten egg, and cover with bread-crumbs. Fry them in boiling fat to a golden brown. Drain them well, and serve on a napkin with parsley. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A thrifty Victorian fish course that still works, provided the roe is cooked gently and cooled completely before slicing. The recipe's own wording is confusing on one point, and that point is the whole technique.
- Read the water instructions carefullyThe roe is blanched five minutes in salted boiling water, then lifted into cold water for a few minutes; "to this water" add the tablespoon of vinegar and half-tablespoon of salt, and it is that acidulated water which is brought up to the boil for the further thirty minutes. The wording is ambiguous about whether the vinegar joins the cold water or a fresh pan, but either reading gives the same acidulated long cook.
- Keep it at a bare simmerA hard boil bursts the membrane and the roe crumbles into the pot. Hold the water at a shiver, and wrap the roe in muslin or cheesecloth if the skin looks fragile. Cod roe is delicate protein; it firms rather than toughens, but it will break apart if agitated.
- Cold is not optionalWarm roe will not slice cleanly and will collapse in the crumb. Drain, cool, then refrigerate several hours or overnight before cutting the half-inch rounds. This is the hinge of the recipe.
- Sourcing the roeFresh cod roe is seasonal — winter into early spring — and most often found at a proper fishmonger rather than a supermarket. Many fishmongers sell it already boiled, which lets you skip straight to slicing and crumbing.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling fat" means fat hot enough to seize the crumb immediately: 350–375°F. Shallow-fry in an inch of oil or dripping, turning once, two to three minutes a side. The interior is already cooked, so you are only browning the coating.
- Egg and crumbsDust the slices with seasoned flour before the egg wash. The cut surfaces are moist and the crumb will slide off without that first dry layer. Dried fine crumbs hold better than fresh.
- ServingServing fried food on a napkin was a common Victorian presentation, the cloth absorbing fat at table. A wedge of lemon, or an anchovy or tartare sauce, suits it better than parsley alone.
- Yield and costA whole cod roe often runs somewhere around 1 to 1.5 lb and should give eight to twelve slices, enough for four as a first course. The "1s. 6d." is the book's routine "probable cost" estimate for the dish.
Cod roe was one of the great economies of the Victorian fish trade: the roe-bearing cod caught in winter yielded a large, cheap, protein-rich organ that cost a fraction of the flesh. Cutting boiled roe into rounds, crumbing them and calling them "cutlets" borrows the language of the mutton chop and applies it to something a poorer household could actually afford. Cod roe also figures in a much longer tradition of cured and pounded roe preparations around the Mediterranean and Black Sea, of which Greek taramasalata is the best-known survivor — though that is made from salt-cured roe, while the British habit is generally traced to the plainer route of boiling, slicing and frying.