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Cooking Sea Fish (Little curry powder a bit)
little curry powder, a bit of butter and flour, three or four spoonsful of rich cream, salt, and add cayenne, if the powder is not hot enough. 161. TO DRESS SALT COD. -Soak and clean the piece to be dressed, then lay it all night in water, with a glass of vinegar. Boil it enough, then break it into flakes on the dish; pour over it parsnips boiled, beaten into a mortar, and then boiled up with cream and a large piece of butter, rubbed with a bit of flour. It may be served as above with egg sauce instead of the parsnip, and the latter sent up whole. Or, the fish may be boiled and sent up without flaking, and sauces as above. Time, the same as for fresh cod. 162. COD PIE.- Take a piece of the middle of a small cod, and salt it well one night. Next day wash it, and season with pepper, salt, and a very little nutmeg, mixed; place in a dish, put some butter on it, and a little good broth of any kind into the dish. Cover it with a crust; and when done add a sauce of a spoonful of broth, a quarter of a pint of cream, a little flour and butter, a grate of lemon and nutmeg, and give it one boil. Oysters may be added. 163. SALT FISH, which is too strong to be eaten dressed in this way, will be much improved by boiling it, and then mashing it up with potatoes in equal quantities, and browning before the fire in a Dutch oven,
Three linked ways with salt cod from a Victorian fish chapter, written for cooks who bought dried, hard-salted fish by the piece rather than the vacuum-packed, lightly cured cod sold today.
- Judge the soak by the fish you actually haveTraditional hard-dried salt cod needs 24-48 hours in several changes of cold water in the refrigerator; the recipe's single night is the tail end of that process. Modern lightly salted or frozen "salt cod" may need only a few hours, so taste a slice of the poaching water before committing.
- The vinegarIn period texts a "glass" usually means a wineglassful, roughly 2 fl oz, though the measure was never fixed. It was held to soften the fibre and cut the strong edge of long-cured fish; with today's milder cure it is optional and can push the flesh toward mushiness if left overnight.
- Never boil it hardThe hinge of the dish. Salt cod goes stringy at a rolling boil. Bring the water to a bare tremble, cut the heat, and let the fish sit 10-15 minutes until it flakes. "Time, the same as for fresh cod" gives no figure; a modern rule of thumb is about 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a simmer.
- The parsnip sauceBoil parsnips until soft, then push them through a sieve or blend them rather than pounding in a mortar. Loosen with cream and finish with butter kneaded into flour (a beurre mani\the boil.
- Cod pie ovenNo temperature is given. A covered pie of this kind wants a hot start to set the pastry, around 425F for 15 minutes, then 350F for another 25-30 until the fish is opaque through. Add oysters only in the last few minutes, or they toughen.
- Nutmeg and lemon"A grate" is a light pass on a microplane, perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon. Period fish cookery leaned on nutmeg and mace where a modern kitchen would use more lemon; adjust to taste rather than doubling.
- The potato versionEqual weights of cooked salt cod and mashed potato, bound with butter and cream, then browned. A Dutch oven here is the reflector oven, a hooded metal box set facing an open fire; the modern equivalent is a shallow dish under a hot grill or broiler until the top blisters.
- YieldA middle cut of about 2 lb of soaked fish, with sauce and potato, serves four to six.
Salt cod was a staple protein of Atlantic Europe for centuries before refrigeration, the fish taken on the Newfoundland and Icelandic banks and carried inland to be eaten on fast days and through the winter. British cooks of the period met it largely as a Lent dish and as cheap household food, and the recipes here reflect a common problem: fish cured so hard that, in the book's own words, it was "too strong to be eaten dressed in this way". The answers given are the familiar ones across Europe -- bury it in cream and butter, bulk it out with a starchy root, or bake it under a crust. The parsnip sauce is an older English touch; parsnips were a favoured sweet winter root before the potato displaced them, and they were long served alongside salt fish, though the origin of the pairing is not documented.