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Salted Cod with Brown Butter
Soak the fish in cold water overnight; if not sufficiently freshened, put in boiling water a few minutes; long-continued soaking deprives the fish of its flavor as well as saltness.
Scrape off the scales, wash carefully, put over the fire, and let it slowly come to a boil. Move the kettle to back of stove, skim, and boil gently for ten minutes.
Heat a little butter, and in it brown a few sprigs of parsley; pour this over the fish, and serve at once.
A plain salt-cod poach finished with parsley browned in butter. The whole dish hangs on the soak and on keeping the poaching water below a real boil.
- Judge the soak, don't just time itOvernight in cold water suits a thick, hard-dried side of salt cod; modern lightly salted or vacuum-packed cod may need only 4-6 hours. Change the water two or three times and taste a sliver of the thin edge — it should read seasoned, not salty.
- The brief boiling-water trickThe instruction to drop under-freshened fish into boiling water for a few minutes is a rescue, not a step. It draws out salt fast but firms the flesh, so use it only if the soak has fallen short.
- Never let it boil hard"Let it slowly come to a boil" then "boil gently" points to the gentlest possible boil, the surface barely moving, rather than a rolling one. A hard boil shreds rehydrated salt cod into strings.
- Ten minutes is for a thick pieceA 1 1/2-inch centre cut takes about that long. Thinner tail pieces are done in 5-6 minutes, when the flakes separate under light pressure.
- Move the kettle to back of stoveOn a wood or coal range the back was the cool zone. On a modern hob, bring the pot to the edge of a simmer and drop the heat to its lowest setting, or pull it off the burner entirely and cover.
- Scraping scalesWritten for whole split, bone-in salt cod, which arrived with skin and scales on. Boneless skinless fillets, the usual supermarket form, need only a rinse.
- The brown butterThe recipe specifies only "a little butter"; 3-4 tablespoons is a workable amount for a family dish. Cook it until the milk solids turn nut-brown, add the parsley sprigs for 20-30 seconds until they crisp and stop spitting, and pour it over immediately — brown butter goes bitter if held.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. About 1 lb of dried salt cod, which gains substantially in weight once soaked, will serve three to four with boiled potatoes.
Dried salted cod was the great preserved protein of the Atlantic world, and by the late nineteenth century American kitchens treated it as a pantry staple rather than a luxury — cheap, shelf-stable, and tied to the Friday and Lenten table in Catholic households and to plain economy everywhere else. Cookbooks of the period print long runs of salt-cod entries: creamed, in balls, in hash, and boiled plain like this one. The warning against long soaking is a standing theme in these books, and a sound one: cod cured hard holds its character in the salt, and water leached through it for days takes the flavour along with the cure. The finish of butter browned with parsley is the simplest of the French-influenced garnishes that crept into American household manuals in this era, a near relation of the beurre noir served with skate.