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COD, SALT, WITH PARSNIPS (a dish for Ash Wednesday)
Salt cod is usually accompanied by parsnips, probably because that wholesome root is at its best and sweetest during the course of Lent, and it is very generally served with them and egg sauce on Ash Wednesday. Wash the fish thoroughly, and lay it in cold water to draw out the salt. It must lie for at least twelve hours, and longer if it is very salt, and the water ought to be changed every four or five hours. When thoroughly soaked, put it in a saucepan with plenty of cold water, and let it heat very gradually. It must not be allowed to boil, or it will harden. When nearly boiling, draw it to the side of the fire, and let it simmer gently for about twenty minutes. Drain it, and serve it unbroken on a hot napkin, accompanied by mashed parsnips and egg sauce (see EGG SAUCE). Time to soak, from twelve to forty-eight hours, according to the dryness and saltness of the fish. Probable cost, 6d. per pound.
A simple dish that lives or dies on two things: enough soaking, and water that never boils. Both are easy to get wrong.
- The hinge: no boilingSalt cod tightens and turns stringy if the water reaches a rolling boil. Bring it up slowly and hold it at a bare shiver, well below a boil, for the twenty minutes given.
- Soaking is not optionalTwelve hours is a minimum for a moderately cured fish; a hard, board-dry salt cod may want a full 36-48 hours. Change the water every four or five hours as directed, and taste a corner of the soaked flesh raw before cooking — it should read seasoned, not saline.
- Buying it nowLook for bacalhau, baccalà or morue in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Caribbean groceries. Thick centre-cut loin pieces soak more evenly than thin tail ends, which go to threads.
- Refrigerate while soakingA Victorian larder was cold; a modern kitchen is not. Soak in the refrigerator, or the surface of the fish will spoil over a day and a half at room temperature.
- Egg sauceThe cross-reference means a plain butter-and-flour white sauce with hard-boiled eggs chopped through it, seasoned with salt and pepper; some versions add a scrape of nutmeg or mace. Keep the salt light given the fish.
- ParsnipsBoil or steam until tender, then mash with butter and a little cream; core out the woody centre of large late-season roots first, as it stays fibrous.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen cloth on the platter absorbed the drips from a poached fish. A warmed dish and a moment's draining does the same job, though the napkin is a good period touch.
- QuantityNo yield is given. Reckon on 5-6 oz of dried fish per person, which swells considerably in soaking, plus about 6 oz of parsnips each.
Salt cod on Ash Wednesday is a survival of the medieval Lenten fast, when flesh meat was forbidden for forty days and dried, salted fish was among the proteins that kept from one year's catch to the next. The Newfoundland and Norwegian fisheries supplied Britain with cod cured hard enough to travel and store for long periods. Cassell's explanation of the parsnip pairing, that the root is sweetest during Lent, is sound: parsnips overwinter in the ground and their starch converts to sugar with frost, so late winter is genuinely their season. Versions of the combination survive around the North Atlantic, from Irish salt ling with white sauce to the salt cod and root vegetables of the Portuguese table.