Creamed Codfish
2 Tablespoons Butter 2 Teaspoons Cornstarch 1 Cup Dessicated Codfish 1/2 Cup Cream Pepper to Taste Soak the codfish for one hour in warm water. Cook the butter and cornstarch together, add the codfish, and stir constantly. Stir in the cream and add a little pepper. Simmer ten minutes, stirring constantly.
A salt-cod cream sauce of the simplest kind, from an era when dried cod was a pantry staple in every household. Two details in the method need attention before you start.
- "Dessicated codfish"This is dried salt cod sold already shredded or flaked, often in a small wooden box. Modern equivalents are labelled shredded salt cod or bacalao desmenuzado, found in Latin, Italian and Portuguese groceries. A cup of the loose shreds is perhaps 2 to 3 ounces by weight, depending on how tightly it is packed.
- The soak is about salt, not softeningOne hour in warm water draws out enough salt for finely shredded cod. Taste a shred before you proceed; if it is still aggressively salty, change the water and give it another twenty to thirty minutes. Drain and squeeze it dry before it goes into the pan.
- No salt anywhere in the recipeThe fish carries the seasoning, which is likely why pepper alone is called for.
- Butter and cornstarch without liquidCooking the two together makes a paste, not a roux in the French sense. Keep the heat low and stir for a minute or so to take the raw edge off the starch, then add the fish and the cream promptly, before the paste scorches.
- Simmer means barely bubblingTen minutes at a hard boil can break half a cup of cream and tighten the fish. Hold it just below a bubble, and add a little milk or water if the sauce goes past the thickness you want; cornstarch sets up faster than flour.
- Yield and servingThis makes about a cup and a half of sauce, enough for two on toast. The period expectation is buttered toast points, split baking-powder biscuits, or boiled potatoes; a chopped hard-boiled egg is a common addition.
Dried salt cod was one of the great preserved foods of the North Atlantic trade, and by the late nineteenth century American manufacturers were selling it already boned, shredded and boxed, which is what "dessicated codfish" means here. Convenience was much of its appeal: no soaking overnight, no picking out bones, no skill required beyond stirring. Creamed codfish on toast belonged to the same breakfast and supper repertoire as creamed chipped beef and creamed eggs, cheap protein turned palatable by butter and cream, and it is often said to have been Friday fare in Catholic households and Lenten fare more broadly. The dish survives in New England as codfish gravy, usually eaten over potatoes.