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Cod Sound Pie
Take equal weights of boiled cod sounds, hard-boiled eggs, and boiled cod. Place these ingredients in layers in a deep pie-dish, season them with pepper, salt, and powdered mace, and pour some good oyster sauce over all. Cover with a good crust, and bake the pie in a moderate oven. It may be used either hot or cold. Probable cost of sounds, 6d. per pound. Time, three-quarters of an hour for a moderate-sized pie.
A Victorian fish pie built on an ingredient that has largely left the English-speaking kitchen. Everything in the filling is already cooked, so the bake is only about setting the crust and heating through.
- Cod soundsThese are the swim bladders of the cod, sold salted or fresh in the nineteenth century and still eaten in Newfoundland, Iceland and parts of Asia. They cook to a soft, faintly gelatinous texture with almost no flavour of their own. If you cannot source them, doubling the flaked cod gives a pie that works, though it loses the gelatine that helps the filling set for cold eating.
- Preparing soundsSalted sounds need soaking in several changes of cold water, usually overnight, then simmering until tender, roughly 30 to 45 minutes. Any dark membrane rubs away easily once they have soaked. Only fully tender sounds should go into the pie; the oven will not soften them further.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat is aimed at a shortcrust or rough puff lid; if you use bought puff pastry, 400F/200C for 25 to 30 minutes browns it better and the filling is hot well before then.
- Oyster sauceNot the dark Cantonese condiment. A Victorian oyster sauce is a white sauce or béchamel enriched with the oyster liquor and small poached oysters. If you make it, keep the oysters in only about two minutes before they leave the heat, or they turn rubbery in the pie.
- MacePowdered mace is the aril that sheathes the nutmeg seed; its flavour is close to nutmeg's, and is often described as more delicate and floral, though descriptions vary. A quarter teaspoon for a medium pie is plenty; more and it dominates the fish. Nutmeg will substitute — use rather less than the mace called for.
- Assembly and sauce levelCool the sauce before pouring it over, and stop short of the rim. Hot sauce under a raw crust makes the pastry slump, and a full dish boils over. A vent in the lid is worth cutting since the filling is already wet.
- EggsSlice the hard-boiled eggs thickly, about a quarter inch. Thin slices disappear into the sauce; the layering is the point of the dish.
- Yield and servingA "moderate-sized" pie-dish here is roughly 2 pints, feeding four to five. Served cold it slices much more cleanly, especially if the sounds have contributed enough gelatine to firm the sauce.
Cod sounds were a thrifty by-product of the salt-cod trade: the swim bladders, along with tongues and roes, were salted and barrelled separately and reached British kitchens cheaply, hence the sixpence a pound quoted here. The layered construction of fish, egg and rich sauce under a crust follows the same logic as the older English fish pies. The taste for sounds faded in Britain during the twentieth century as salt cod gave way to fresh and frozen fillets; they remain a familiar food in Newfoundland, where they are commonly fried, and in Iceland and parts of East and Southeast Asia. The gelatine that made them useful in a cold pie is related to the substance that made fish bladders a source of isinglass for clarifying beer and wine.