Codfish Cakes
Prepare the fish and potatoes the same as for codfish balls; add a little finely minced parsley. Shape it into flat cakes three-fourths of an inch thick. Saute until a rich brown on both sides with slices of salt pork or bacon, removing the pork to a hot platter as soon as nicely crisped, and arranging it around the cakes.
By cooking the fish the day before it is wanted, and using mashed potatoes left from dinner, or made ready with the fish, these cakes can be quickly prepared for breakfast.
A breakfast dish built on leftovers: the recipe assumes you already know the codfish ball formula from the preceding entry, so the working details live there rather than here.
- What the base mixture isThe recipe sends you to the preceding codfish-ball entry for the formula. Typical published versions of the period run to roughly one part flaked salt cod to two parts hot mashed potato, bound with a beaten egg and a spoonful of butter and seasoned with pepper; many omit added salt on the grounds that the fish carries enough.
- Salt cod needs soakingDried salt cod must be freshened before cooking: several changes of cold water, refrigerated, for anything from a few hours to a full day depending on how hard-dried and thick the piece is, then simmered gently until it flakes. Boiling it hard toughens the fibres. Without an adequate soak the cakes will be unpleasantly salty.
- The mixture must be coldThe mixture handles better cold -- A warm potato-and-fish mixture slumps in the pan and the cakes are more likely to break when turned; chilling the shaped cakes half an hour helps. The recipe's own make-ahead note is framed as a way to get breakfast on the table quickly, though cooking the fish the day before has the incidental effect of leaving you with a cold mixture — the recipe also allows potatoes "made ready with the fish."
- Sauté means shallow fat, not dryThe pork slices are there to render fat for frying as much as to garnish. Two or three ounces of diced salt pork or four rashers of bacon give enough fat for a batch; if it looks dry, add butter or oil rather than letting the cakes stick.
- Heat and timingMedium heat, about 4 minutes a side for a three-quarter-inch cake. Everything in the mixture is already cooked, so you are browning a crust, not cooking through — high heat scorches the surface before it sets.
- ParsleyParsley, chopped fine; about two tablespoons to a pound of finished mixture. Stir it through the cooled mixture.
- YieldA pound of soaked cod with two pounds of potato will give roughly ten to twelve cakes, enough for four or five as a breakfast or supper dish.