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Cod, Salt, Fried
Soak and simmer the cod as in the preceding recipe; drain it, and divide it into large flakes. Fry in a little butter two large onions cut into thin slices, and, when lightly browned, drain them. Thicken the butter with a little flour, and when very smooth add gradually some new milk or cream until the sauce is as thick as a custard. Let the onions heat once more in the sauce, and season them with a little cayenne. Fry the flakes of fish until lightly browned. Place them on a hot dish, and pour the sauce over them. Time to simmer the salt cod, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. per pound. One pound of cod with sauce will serve for three or four persons.
A Victorian way with salt cod: poached, flaked, fried, and sauced with browned onions in a béchamel. The recipe leans on the preceding entry for the soaking, which is the part that decides whether the dish is edible.
- The soak is the whole dishCassell's assumes you know it; modern salt cod does not. Hard-dried salt cod needs 24-48 hours in cold water in the refrigerator, with the water changed three or four times. Taste a shred at the end - it should be pleasantly seasoned, not saline.
- Simmer means simmerFifteen to twenty minutes at a bare tremble, never a rolling boil, or the flakes shrink and turn stringy. If you have bought the softer wet-salted or lightly cured cod now sold in many fishmongers, eight to ten minutes is plenty.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, as distinct from skimmed or the previous day's. Whole milk or single cream both work; the recipe gives no quantities, only "a little flour" and milk added until the sauce is as thick as a custard. As a starting point, roughly 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour to a half pint (a scant cup and a quarter) of milk will get you there.
- Fry the flakes dryDrain the poached fish thoroughly and blot it before it meets the pan, or it will steam rather than brown. Large flakes hold together; small ones disintegrate into the butter.
- OnionsTwo large onions is generous for a pound of fish; the sweetness works against the salt. Brown them slowly; scorched onion turns the sauce bitter.
- CayenneA common seasoning for fish sauces in this period. An eighth of a teaspoon is enough to register. Salt the sauce only after tasting, since the cod brings its own.
- Yield and costOne pound of prepared cod serves three or four as the book says. The 6d. per pound is a Victorian shop price; the recipe names no accompaniment.
Salt cod is the oldest industrial food of the North Atlantic: split, salted and wind-dried, it travelled without refrigeration and kept for months, which made it the staple of ships' stores, inland markets and, in Catholic and Anglican households alike, of fast days and Lent. By the time Cassell's was compiled, Britain drew on Newfoundland, Norwegian and Icelandic cures, and the dictionary gives salt cod several treatments, because it was a pantry ingredient a cook was expected to redeem rather than merely serve. The treatment here, with browned onions folded into a white sauce, sits alongside the onion-and-cream salt fish dishes of Scandinavia; the pairing of heavy salt with sweet onion and milk was a common solution wherever the fish was landed.