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Fish (salt), Boiled
Soak two pounds of salt fish in cold water for twelve hours before using. Then put it into plenty of cold water, bring it slowly to the boil, and simmer very gently until cooked. Serve garnished with fresh parsley, and send egg sauce to table with it. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A plain Victorian treatment of salt cod, dependent almost entirely on the soak and on keeping the water below a boil. Two points carry the dish; the rest is garnish.
- The soak is the recipeTwelve hours in cold water is a minimum for hard-dried salt cod, and the water should be changed three or four times over that period rather than left to sit. Modern salt fish varies enormously in cure strength: lightly salted fillets sold in vacuum packs may need only 6-8 hours, while a board-stiff whole side can want 24-48 hours in the refrigerator. Taste a slver of the raw flesh after soaking; it should be pleasantly seasoned, not aggressive.
- Never let it boil"Bring it slowly to the boil, and simmer very gently" is the hinge. Salt cod at a rolling boil turns stringy and shreds apart. Bring the water just to the point of trembling, then pull it back so the surface barely moves.
- TimingCassell's gives none. Two pounds of thick soaked loin needs roughly 15-20 minutes at a bare simmer, thin tail pieces rather less. It is done when the flakes separate cleanly under a fork and the centre is opaque.
- "Salt fish" is not only codIn British kitchens of the period the term covered salted ling, hake and haddock as well as cod. Any of them behaves the same way here; cod loin is what you will find most easily.
- Egg sauceNot a custard. It is a plain white sauce (about 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour, half a pint of milk) with two hard-boiled eggs chopped through it, seasoned with pepper and very little salt, since the fish brings plenty of its own.
- Salting the cooking waterDon't. The instruction to use "plenty of cold water" plausibly assumes unsalted water, which will draw residual salt out of the fish as it heats.
- Cost and yield1s. 6d. is the book's own "probable cost" estimate for the dish rather than a documented retail price, and it is inexpensive by the standards of Cassell's. Two pounds of soaked fish should serve about four with potatoes.
Salt cod was the great preserved protein of the North Atlantic, cured on the Newfoundland and Norwegian fisheries and traded into Britain in large quantities, largely to feed the meatless days of the church calendar; the earlier medieval trade was chiefly in air-dried stockfish rather than salted fish. By the time Cassell's was compiled it had shifted from religious obligation to household thrift: dried fish kept for months without ice, cost a fraction of fresh, and turned up on Fridays and through Lent from habit as much as doctrine. The pairing with egg sauce is thoroughly English, and the same dish in a Mediterranean or Caribbean kitchen would be met instead with olive oil, garlic or chilli. What the entry really records is a technique rather than a dish: rehydrate, poach gently, sauce.