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Codfish à la Creole
As a sauce for codfish à la creole, stew together for half an hour I can of tomatoes, 1 pint of boiling water, 1 teaspoonful of salt, I sliced onion, and I green pepper seeded and cut fine.
Rub through a sieve. Have a tail piece of cod weighing 4 or 5 pounds and, if possible, have it skinned. Lay on a flat pan, pour over it 1/3 of the sauce and place in a moderate oven. Keep the rest of the sauce hot and baste from time to time with a few spoonfuls of it. When the fish begins to separate from the bones it is done.
Serve with what remains of the sauce. Such fish as is left is flaked, reheated and served next day on toast.
A whole tail piece of cod baked under a strained tomato-pepper sauce, in the plain Creole manner of stewed tomato, onion and green pepper. The method is sound; only the units and the oven language need translating.
- The numeralsWhere the text prints a capital I before an ingredient it means the figure 1: one can of tomatoes, one pint of boiling water, one teaspoonful of salt, one sliced onion, one green pepper.
- Can sizePeriod cans of tomatoes came in several sizes, often larger than the 14-16 oz can standard today; a modern can will serve here. Whole peeled tomatoes suit the recipe better than crushed, since everything goes through a sieve anyway.
- How much sauce goes on the fishThe proportion poured over before baking has dropped out of the line. Half is the sensible reading: enough to coat and keep the surface moist, with the rest held hot for basting and for the table.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature. Moderate is conventionally taken as somewhere around 350F. At that heat a 4-5 lb tail piece will take roughly 45 minutes to an hour, but go by the sign the recipe gives rather than the clock.
- The doneness cue"Begins to separate from the bones" is the hinge. Cod dries out fast past that point; check at the thickest part near the backbone and pull it as soon as the flesh loosens. A thermometer reading of 145F at the centre says the same thing.
- Sieving the sauceHalf an hour of stewing softens the pepper and onion enough to push through a sieve with a wooden spoon or ladle. A food mill does it faster; a blender gives a smoother, paler sauce that will not reduce and cling in quite the same way.
- Buying the cutA 4-5 lb tail piece is a special order at most counters now. Two thick loin fillets, skin off, laid in the same flat pan will work, though they cook considerably faster - start checking at 20 minutes.
- Yield and the second dayA piece this size serves six to eight. The flaked leftovers on toast should be reheated once only and eaten within two days, kept cold in between.
Creole cooking in American household books of this period was largely shorthand for tomato, onion and green pepper stewed together - a combination Northern publishers reduced to a reliable sauce for whatever fish was cheap. Cod was the cheap fish, salted or fresh, and the tail piece cheapest of all: bonier, thinner, and sold at a discount against the shoulder. The closing instruction is the more telling part of it. Flaking the remains, reheating them and serving them on toast the next day was not an afterthought but the point of buying a large piece in the first place, and household writers of the era rarely let a baked fish end without saying what became of the rest of it.