Boiled Salt Cod
Select a piece from the middle of the fish weighing a pound or two. Wash, cover with cold water and soak over night. Put in a kettle of warm water and heat slowly; when barely simmering keep at that point for fifteen minutes, being careful that it does not really boil. Drain and serve with a drawn butter, lemon or tomato sauce.
Salt cod is still sold, though rarely in the whole splayed slabs this recipe assumes. The instruction that matters is the one about not boiling: the flesh tightens and shreds the moment the water breaks.
- Hold it below a simmerBring the water only to the point where bubbles rise occasionally, around 175-180F, and hold it there. A rolling boil toughens the fibres and drives the fish apart into dry strings.
- The middle cutThe centre of a split salt cod is the thickest, evenest part, free of the thin tail and the bony nape. If you are buying pre-cut pieces, choose thick white ones rather than the yellowed, papery ends.
- Soaking is not optional, and overnight may not be enoughModern salt cod varies a great deal in cure. Change the water two or three times over 24 to 48 hours in the refrigerator, not on the counter, and taste a sliver before cooking: it should read seasoned, not saline.
- Start warm, not coldThe recipe calls for a warm-water start rather than a boiling one. Plunging soaked cod into boiling water sets the outside before the centre warms; whether the author intended anything further by 'warm' is not stated.
- Fifteen minutes is for a thick pieceA one to two pound centre cut of full thickness will take about that long. Thinner supermarket portions are done in six to eight minutes, when the flesh separates into flakes under gentle pressure.
- Drawn butterIn American books of this period drawn butter means a simple flour-and-butter white sauce thinned with the fish liquor or milk, not the clarified butter the term means today.
- YieldA pound of soaked salt cod serves two to three as a main course with potatoes, or four with a substantial sauce and bread.
Salt cod was the cheapest reliable protein in the American pantry for three centuries: dried and heavily salted, it kept without ice, travelled anywhere, and cost a fraction of fresh fish. The trade that produced it ran out of Newfoundland, the Grand Banks and New England. A writer might well specify a piece from the middle of the fish, that being the thickest, evenest part. The gentle-heat instruction has a practical basis: salted, dried muscle has already lost much of its water, and boiling it a second time leaves nothing but fibre. Serving it under a drawn butter or tomato sauce is the standard nineteenth-century American treatment, and the same plain poached cod turns up across the Atlantic world in dishes from Portuguese bacalhau to West Indian saltfish.