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Codfish Fillets, Hollandaise
Put the desired number of fillets of cod in a buttered stewpan, with 1 gill of stock; sprinkle lightly with minced parsley, and set either in the oven or on the stove to cook. When done, place on a dish with a border of mashed potato, and serve.
A plain shallow-poach in stock, finished with a piped potato border. The technique is sound; the quantities assume a cook who knows how thick a cod fillet is.
- A gillIn American usage one gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup; British gills are often reckoned at 5 fl oz. For more than two or three fillets you will want enough stock to come a third of the way up the fish, so scale it up rather than treating the gill as fixed.
- StewpanA stewpan here is a wide, straight-sided saucepan with a lid — a modern sauté pan or shallow braiser does the job. Choose one that holds the fillets in a single layer without crowding.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. If you set it in the oven, a moderate oven of roughly 325-350F suits this kind of gentle poach. Cover the pan, either with a lid or a buttered paper cut to fit, so the exposed tops do not dry.
- "When done"Cod fillets of an inch at the thickest need roughly 8 to 10 minutes; thinner tail pieces less. The fish is ready when the flakes separate under light pressure and the centre is just opaque. Cod overcooks readily into cottony shreds.
- StockA light fish or vegetable stock, or the water from steaming shellfish. Avoid a heavy brown stock, which will overwhelm the fish and muddy the plate.
- The potato borderSuch borders were commonly piped from stiff mashed potato through a star tube around the rim of the dish, and often browned briefly under high heat, though this recipe asks only for a border. The mash needs to be dry and firm enough to hold a ridge — hold back the milk.
- The sauceThe dish is named for hollandaise, so make a standard hollandaise separately and spoon it over the drained fillets at the table; it will slacken and separate if held hot for long. Do not use the poaching stock as a base for it.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no yield; reckon one 6 oz fillet per person, with enough stiff mash to ring the dish.
Fillets cooked in a little stock under cover is a standard shallow poach of the nineteenth-century professional kitchen, and the finish — a piped potato border, a spoonful of a warm butter emulsion — is characteristic of the hotel and club cookery that American compilations of the 1890s and 1900s drew on heavily. Cod carried the weight of that repertoire because it was cheap, abundant on the North Atlantic coast, and firm enough to lift from a pan in one piece; a book of this sort will run many cod entries distinguished mainly by the sauce named in the title. Hollandaise itself is usually said to take its name from Dutch-influenced practice, though that account is traditional rather than documented, and the name was in use before the standardised egg-and-butter formula settled into the classical canon.