Codfish Cakes
Delightful fish cakes are made by soaking and shredding the fish. Cover it with cold water, heat to the scalding point and drain. Repeat three times. Measure and mix with double its bulk of hot mashed potato; for each pint add I large tablespoonful of butter, I well-beaten egg and plenty of salt and pepper. Mold in small flat cakes and sauté in a little hot fat; or form in small balls, dip each in beaten egg, roll in fine bread crumbs and fry golden brown in smoking hot deep fat.
This is the classic New England salt-cod cake, written for a cook who kept a box of dried salt fish in the pantry. The whole method turns on getting the salt down to a seasoning level before the potato ever meets the fish.
- The fish"The fish" here is salt cod — hard, dry, board-stiff planks, not fresh fillet. Fresh cod will not survive the repeated scalding and gives a watery, bland cake.
- Soaking comes firstThe recipe compresses the whole first stage into one word; "soaking and shredding" is doing a lot of work in one phrase. Modern boneless salt cod wants 12–24 hours in cold water, changed three or four times, before you start.
- Scalding pointHeat until the water steams and small bubbles form at the pan edge, around 180F, then drain. Never a rolling boil — boiling toughens the fibres and makes the cakes stringy. Three repeats is the recipe's salt gauge; taste a shred after the second and stop when it is pleasantly salty rather than harsh.
- Measuring by bulk"Double its bulk" means two parts mashed potato by volume to one part flaked fish, measured after draining and shredding. The "for each pint" that follows most likely means a pint of the combined mixture, though it could be read as a pint of the measured fish: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 beaten egg.
- Salt and pepper"Plenty of salt" is written for cod soaked to the point of blandness. Season the mixture to taste at the end; depending on your soak it may need none at all.
- Potato textureUse hot, dry, floury mashed potato with no milk or cream added. Wet mash makes cakes that slump in the pan and drink fat.
- Frying temperature"Smoking hot deep fat" indicates fat hot enough to brown quickly, in practice around 375F. Fat actually smoking is past its point and will taste scorched; use a thermometer and fry the balls in small batches.
- YieldA pint of mixture makes roughly eight small cakes, depending how you size them — two or three servings as a main dish, more as part of a breakfast plate.
Salt cod cakes are the thrift dish of the North Atlantic: dried fish that kept for months without ice, stretched with the cheapest starch in the house. In New England they were a breakfast fixture, often paired with baked beans, and the fried-ball version was widely known as "codfish balls." A pound of salt cod fed a family the way a pound of fresh fish never could, and the doubled bulk of potato made it go further still. Repeated scald-and-drain is one of several period desalting methods, alongside the long soak in changes of cold water.