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Chafing-dish Dainties (Butter add two tablespoonfuls)
butter; add two tablespoonfuls of flour, onefourth a teaspoonful of paprica and one pimento, chopped fine; also, add one cup of tomato pulp, and, when the sauce boils, half a pound of "hatcheled" codfish, or any salt codfish picked into small pieces and freshened in one quart of cold water. Serve, while hot, with brownbread sandwiches, and pickles or pim-olas.
The page begins mid-sentence, so the opening quantity of butter is lost; the proportions that follow suggest about two tablespoonfuls, matched to the two of flour. Everything else is a straightforward chafing-dish sauce built on salt cod.
- The hinge: freshen the fish properlySalt cod needs a genuine soak, not a rinse. Cover the picked fish in cold water and leave it several hours, changing the water two or three times, then taste a shred before it goes into the sauce. The single quart named here is a starting volume, not a duration.
- "Hatcheled" codfishFrom hatchel, the comb used for flax: salt cod combed or shredded fine, of the kind sold ready-picked in the period. Modern salt cod comes in stiff planks or thick fillets; soak, then flake it by hand into small pieces.
- Do not salt, and do not boil hardEven well-soaked cod carries plenty of salt, so season the sauce only with the paprika. Once the flakes go in, let them heat through for two or three minutes; longer simmering turns salt cod stringy and dry.
- Paprica and pimentoPaprika, and one pimiento pepper, chopped; the text does not say whether fresh or the canned/jarred kind, so either will serve (drain if jarred). Sweet paprika rather than hot or smoked suits the dish.
- Tomato pulpNot juice and not paste. A cup of canned crushed or strained tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes seeded and pressed through a sieve, gives the right body against two tablespoonfuls of flour.
- VesselThe blazer of a chafing dish sits directly over the flame for this; the hot-water bath is for holding, not for cooking a roux. A small heavy saucepan does the same work.
- Pim-olasA period trade name for pimiento-stuffed green olives, still sold everywhere under plainer names.
- YieldNo yield is given; half a pound of salt cod with a cup of sauce would stretch to about three or four as a light supper with the brown-bread sandwiches.
Creamed and sauced salt cod was a New England staple long before it reached the chafing dish: dried cod kept for months without ice, and picking it into shreds was a familiar winter kitchen chore. What suggests a turn-of-the-twentieth-century date for this version is the seasoning: both paprika and canned pimiento, both newly fashionable in American cooking around 1900 as Spanish and Hungarian imports became reliably available in tins and jars. The chafing dish itself was then at the height of its popularity for late suppers and after-theatre entertaining, valued because it let a hostess cook at the table without a servant; the book accordingly pairs the dish with sandwiches, pickles and olives rather than with anything requiring a kitchen.