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Some Kitchen Kinks: Fried
Fried Salt Pork with Salt Codfish or "Salt-Fish Dinner." ½ pound salt pork. 1 pound codfish. 2 cups of milk (skim milk will do). 4 tablespoonsful flour.
A speck of salt.
Cut the codfish into strips, soak in lukewarm water and then cook in water until tender but do not allow the water to come to the boiling point except for a very short time as prolonged boiling may make it tough. Cut the pork into one-fourth inch slices and cut several gashes in each piece. Fry very slowly until golden brown, and remove, pouring off the fat. Out of 4 tablespoons ful of the fat, the flour, and the milk make a white sauce. Dish up the codfish with pieces of pork around it and serve with boiled potatoes and beets. Some persons serve the pork, and the fat from it, in a gravy boat so it can be added as relished.
A New England boiled dinner in its plainest form, built around two preserved staples. The whole thing hangs on how you treat the salt cod.
- Soak the cod properlyThe recipe gives no soaking time. Hard-dried salt cod generally needs 12 to 24 hours in cold water in the refrigerator, changed three or four times; a brief lukewarm soak will leave it very salty by modern standards. Taste a corner of the raw fish after soaking; it should be pleasantly salty, not fierce.
- Never boil the fishThis is the hinge. Hold the poaching water at a bare shiver, around 170-180F, until the flakes separate, usually 10 to 15 minutes for thick pieces. A rolling boil squeezes the protein and turns salt cod into string.
- Salt pork todayRinse the slices and pat dry; commercial salt pork can be very salty. The gashes cut in each piece help the fat render and probably keep the slices from curling. Render slowly over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes.
- The white sauceFour tablespoons of fat, four tablespoons of flour and two cups of milk is a standard medium bechamel. Cook the roux a minute or two before adding the milk, then simmer 5 minutes to lose the raw flour taste. Do not add salt until you have tasted it: the pork fat and the fish both carry plenty.
- "A speck of salt"Period shorthand for a very small amount, less than a pinch. In this dish it may well be unnecessary.
- Skim milkThe aside that skim milk will do reflects a household with skimmed milk on hand as a by-product of cream. Whole milk gives a better sauce; skim will thicken but tastes thin against the pork.
- Yield and servingProbably four to six servings, with boiled potatoes and beets as the recipe directs. The gravy-boat option, pork and its fat served alongside, lets each eater decide how rich the plate becomes.
Salt-fish dinner was a recurring fixture in the New England week, often associated with Saturday, and it survived in cookbooks like this one after refrigeration made preserved cod optional. Dried salt cod was central to the North Atlantic trade: the better grades went to Catholic Europe, the rougher grades to the Caribbean, and the remainder stayed on the coast, where it kept for months in a dry pantry. Pairing it with fried salt pork, a milk-and-flour sauce, potatoes and beets is thrift arranged as a meal, every element storable and none of it requiring an icebox. The instruction to serve the pork fat separately in a gravy boat suggests that rendered fat could be treated as a condiment, taken to taste.