Stewed Codfish
1/2 pound of salt codfish; 1 tablespoonful butter; 1 quart of milk; 2 potatoes; 2 crackers; 1/2 teaspoonful salt; 1 saltspoonful of pepper. Soak the codfish overnight in cold water. When ready to make the stew, cut the fish into small pieces and put into the stewing-pan with the potatoes, which have been cut into blocks. Cover with boiling water, and boil for ten minutes; then drain, and add the milk. When the milk has become scalding hot, add the crackers, which should be crushed fine. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.
A plain New England salt-cod chowder, thickened with crushed crackers rather than flour. The parboil-and-drain step is what keeps it from turning into salt soup, so do not skip it.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The half teaspoon of added salt is written for fish that has been soaked and drained; taste before adding any of it, since salt cod varies enormously in how much it gives up.
- Soaking the codOvernight in cold water is the minimum for traditional hard, bone-dry salt cod. Change the water two or three times, and refrigerate rather than leaving it on the counter. Modern lightly salted or frozen "salt cod" may need only a few hours; taste a shred of the raw soaked fish to judge.
- The parboil is the hingeBoiling the fish and potato in fresh water for ten minutes and then discarding that water carries off the last of the salt. Adding the milk to an unrained pot gives a stew nobody will finish.
- CrackersProbably common crackers or a similar hard, plain biscuit, used here as a thickener rather than for flavour. Perhaps half a cup of crushed oyster crackers or unsalted-top saltines stands in, though modern crackers thicken faster and finer than the original, so add gradually and stop when the stew coats a spoon.
- Scalding, not boilingMilk at scalding point is around 180F, when the surface trembles and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge. Take it past that and it will catch on the pan bottom and taste of it.
- PotatoesTwo potatoes, presumably medium ones. Cut them small enough to be tender in the ten-minute boil, about half-inch dice, or they will still be hard when the milk goes in.
- YieldA quart of milk and half a pound of fish makes about four generous bowls as a main course. It thickens considerably on standing and will need thinning with milk if reheated.
Salt cod was the currency of the North Atlantic long before it was a supper dish: dried on flakes in Newfoundland and Massachusetts, shipped to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and kept in New England pantries because it needed no ice. Stews of this kind -- fish, potato, milk, and crackers crushed in to thicken -- sit close to the ancestry of chowder, and the cracker rather than a flour roux appears to be the older method, ship's biscuit being the thickener at hand at sea. Salt cod remained cheap weekday protein, and in Catholic households a Friday standby.