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"Boston Quail"
SALT AND PEPPER 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER 1/4 CUP CREAM I CUP SHREDDED CODFISH I EGG WHITE, BEATEN STIFF Combine ingredients in order given. Drop large spoonfuls in a greased baking pan and bake in hot oven.
Stuffed codfish, the big brother of this "Boston Quail," is called "Cape Cod turkey," just as tuna in California is "chicken of the sea."
A small salt-cod fritter baked rather than fried, of the kind that turns up in New England camp and shore cookery under a joking name. The ingredient list is terse, so a few things want spelling out.
- The fish is salt cod"Shredded codfish" in this period means dried salt cod, sold in boxes already picked into fluff. It must be freshened before use — soak or rinse in several changes of cold water, then squeeze dry — or the finished puffs will be inedibly salty. Modern boneless salt cod works if you soak it several hours and shred it fine.
- Hold back the saltThe written "salt and pepper" assumes cod that has been thoroughly soaked. Taste the shredded fish first; if it is still assertive, use pepper only.
- Hot oven"hot oven" in cookbooks of this period is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. The high heat helps the egg white lift the mixture rather than letting it slump into a pancake.
- The butterTwo tablespoons should be softened or melted and cooled, not straight from cold. Cold butter will not disperse through a quarter cup of cream and you will get greasy pockets.
- Fold, do not stir"Combine in order given" is misleading with a stiff egg white last. Mix the butter, cream, fish and seasoning first, then fold the white in with a light hand. Beaten-out air cannot be beaten back in.
- Bake straight awayThe mixture deflates as it stands. Have the pan greased and the oven up to temperature before the white is beaten.
- Timing and yieldLarge spoonfuls at this heat will likely take somewhere around 12-15 minutes, but go by colour and by a set, puffed surface. A cup of fish should give roughly half a dozen mounds, depending how large the spoonfuls are.
Salt cod was the cheap protein of the New England coast for three centuries, and it collected affectionate nicknames wherever it stood in for something grander: a stuffed and baked salt cod dressed like a roast was long called "Cape Cod turkey." The comparison the writer draws to "chicken of the sea" for tuna is the same trick from the other coast, where the California canning industry of the early twentieth century promoted tuna as a mild white meat. Recipes like this one belong to the era when dried cod kept without refrigeration and could be carried to a camp or a shore cottage in a wooden box, needing only water, an egg and a hot fire to become supper.