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Codfish à La Bénédictine
4 medium-sized sweet potatoes Juice of 1 lemon Salt
1 pound fresh codfish
Butter
1 cup cream or milk
Bread-crums
Pepper
Boil the codfish, drain it and keep it warm.
Pare the sweet potatoes, cook them in salted water or steam them and let them dry, then mash and add a pinch of pepper, about two tablespoons of butter or butter substitute, the juice of half a lemon, and one cup of cream or milk.
Skin the fish and remove the bones. Pound it rather fine; add a tablespoon of butter and the juice of half a lemon. Mix the hot mashed potatoes with this. Add more milk or cream, so as dough to make a rough dough. Grease a baking-dish, and put the . Put into it. Cover the top with bread-crums and melted butter the small dots of butter here and there on the top and bake in oven for twenty minutes. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked.
The text as printed is garbled in the final lines — a compositor's accident that left fragments of two sentences overlapping. The dish itself is straightforward: a gratin of pounded cod folded into mashed sweet potato, crumbed and browned.
- The broken sentence"Grease a baking-dish, and put the . Put into it. Cover the top with bread-crums and melted butter the small dots of butter here and there" collapses two directions into one. Read it as: spread the mixture in a greased dish, cover with crumbs, then either brush with melted butter or dot with butter.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given at all. Twenty minutes on an already-hot mixture suggests a fairly hot oven, around 400F in modern terms, enough to set and brown the crumbs rather than cook anything through.
- Cook the cod gently"Boil the codfish" is period shorthand. Cod at a rolling boil breaks into dry flakes; bring the water to a bare simmer, slide the fish in, and hold it there 8–10 minutes for a pound, until it just parts.
- Sweet potatoes, not whiteThis is deliberate and unusual — the classic version uses floury white potato. Sweet potato gives a wetter, sweeter mash, so hold back some of the cream until you see how the mixture behaves.
- Dry the potatoes"Let them dry" is the hinge. Return the drained potatoes to the empty hot pan for a minute or two so the surface moisture steams off, otherwise the cup of cream turns the whole thing to soup and it will not hold a crumb topping.
- Butter substituteThe phrase meant oleomargarine or a vegetable shortening. Such substitutions were widely recommended in American household books, particularly during the First World War fat shortages, though the wording alone does not fix a date. Butter is the intended article.
- "Pound it rather fine"A mortar or the back of a wooden spoon. A food processor will take the fish to paste in seconds, which loses the slight thread of texture the dish wants — pulse it, or simply flake and mash by hand.
- Cream measureOne cup goes into the potatoes; the later "add more milk or cream" is at your discretion, and with sweet potato you may need none at all. Aim for a mixture stiff enough to mound on a spoon.
- YieldA pound of fish and four potatoes serves four as a main course, or six as a first course. It is served in its baking dish, so choose one worth putting on the table.
"A la Benedictine" attaches to a family of French cod dishes in which salt cod is pounded to a paste with potato and oil or cream -- essentially a brandade sent to the oven under crumbs. The name is traditionally linked to the monastic association of fish cookery, though that derivation is tradition rather than documented fact. What is striking here is the adaptation: fresh cod stands in for salt, sweet potatoes for white, and the recipe openly allows a "butter substitute."