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Sauce for Cod's Head
Take a lobster, stick a skewer through the tail, to keep the water out; throw a handful of salt in the water. When it boils put in the lobster and boil half an hour; pick off the spawns, if any and pound them very fine in a marble mortar and put them in one-half pound drawn butter. Take the meat out of the lobster, pull it in bits and put it in your butter; add: 1 spoonful walnut catsup. 1 slice of lemon. 1 or 2 slices horseradish. A little pounded mace. Salt and cayenne pepper.
Boil them one minute; then take out the lemon and horseradish, and serve it up in the sauce-boat.--Mrs. R.
A Georgian English lobster sauce carried into a Virginia community cookbook, meant to be poured over a boiled cod's head and shoulders. Two things need fixing before it works: the lobster is boiled far too long, and the finished butter should never actually boil.
- The half-hour boilHalf an hour will turn a lobster to cotton wool. A 1 to 1 1/4 lb live lobster needs 8 to 10 minutes in hard-boiling salted water, a 2 lb one about 12 to 15. The skewer through the tail keeps it from curling; it is not needed if you buy the lobster already cooked.
- Spawn and coral"Spawns" are the dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral-red when cooked, along with the soft tomalley. Pounded smooth and beaten into the butter they thicken and colour the sauce; if your lobster has none, the sauce is paler but still good.
- Drawn butterIn this period drawn butter is not simply melted butter but a sauce of butter, a little flour and water or fish stock, whisked smooth. Half a pound is 2 sticks, or about 1 cup, which yields roughly 1 1/2 cups of sauce once liquid is added.
- Do not let it boil"Boil them one minute" may reflect a looser older use of "boil" for any bubbling; in any case a butter sauce at a real boil will separate into oil and curd. Bring it just to a tremble, hold it there a minute to warm the lobster meat through, and take it off.
- Walnut catsupA dark, salty, spiced condiment made from green walnuts, still sold by British firms but rare in American shops. Mushroom ketchup is the closest substitute; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and a splash of soy will do the same job of adding salt and depth.
- Vague measuresA "spoonful" here is best read as a tablespoon. "A little pounded mace" is about 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace; it is sharper and more floral than nutmeg, so do not overdo it.
- Lemon and horseradishBoth are infusions, not ingredients: they go in whole and come out before serving. Use fresh horseradish root cut in coins, not the prepared creamed sort, which will curdle and cloud the butter.
- Yield and servingEnough sauce for four to six servings of poached cod, hake or halibut. Cod heads are no longer a retail item in most of the country, so serve it over thick fillets or a whole small fish, and send it to table hot in a warmed boat.
Boiled cod's head and shoulders with lobster sauce was a fixture of English fish cookery from the mid-eighteenth century onward, and lobster sauces for boiled fish appear in Hannah Glasse and her many imitators long before this dish reached Virginia. The head was prized rather than discarded: it carries the cheeks, the collar meat and a good deal of gelatin, and it was cheap, which may be part of why the expensive lobster went into the sauce rather than the dish. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878, with 1879 printings), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housewives, prints recipes as they were handed in and signs them with initials, hence "Mrs. R." The unexplained walnut catsup and pounded mace are a good gauge of the period: both were pantry staples a modern cook has to go looking for.