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Toasted Salt Fish
Pick salt codfish in long thin strips. If very salt, it may need to be freshened by standing for a short time in lukewarm water. Place on a greased wire broiler, and broil until brown on one side; turn, and brown the other. Remove to platter, and spread with butter.
A one-ingredient dish that depends entirely on how salty your fish is and how close it sits to the heat.
- Judge the salt firstModern salt cod varies enormously, from lightly salted fillets to bone-dry planks. Taste a shred raw: if it makes you wince, soak it. Fifteen to thirty minutes in lukewarm water suits ordinary salted fillets; a hard, board-dry piece needs several hours or overnight in the refrigerator with two or three changes of cold water.
- "Wire broiler"This is a hinged double wire grid held over coals or a stove burner, not an oven setting. A grill basket over a gas flame or an outdoor grill gives the same effect. Under a modern overhead broiler, lay the strips on a greased rack set 3 to 4 inches from the element.
- Pick, do not sliceSalt cod separates naturally along the muscle fibers. Pulling it apart with your fingers into strips the thickness of a pencil gives ragged edges that brown and crisp; knife-cut strips stay uniform and leathery.
- TimingThin strips brown in about 1 to 2 minutes a side. The fish is cured and dried rather than raw, so the broiling is mainly for color and crisping. Left longer it dries to string.
- Squeeze it dryAfter soaking, press the strips hard in a towel. Wet fish steams on the broiler instead of browning, and the water dilutes the butter at the end.
- FinishingButter is the whole sauce here, so use more than seems reasonable and add it while the fish is hot enough to melt it. A little lemon or black pepper is in keeping; salt is not.
- YieldThe book gives none. About 1/2 lb of dried salt cod, before soaking, serves two as a breakfast or supper dish with potatoes or toast.
Salt cod was the plainest of New England staples, and a book of this kind, generally taken to have been written for Boston households in the 1890s, could assume a cook had some in the pantry year round: the Massachusetts fishery salted and dried its catch for the Atlantic trade, and the cheaper grades stayed home. Farmer's salt-fish recipes tend to involve soaking, shredding and creaming, or binding the flakes into balls and frying them; this one is the shortest route of all, essentially breakfast toast made of fish, cooked directly over the fire on a wire broiler and finished with butter. Dishes like this belong to the era before household refrigeration, when preserved protein was the default and fresh fish the occasion.