Codfish Balls
One quart of raw sliced potatoes; one large cup of salt fish; one egg; two tablespoons of cream or milk; two tablespoons of butter; salt and pepper to taste. Pick all the bones from the fish, shredding the latter finely, and slowly boil the fish and the sliced potatoes together in plenty of water, until the potatoes are soft. Mash both together, and beat until fine and light; then add the seasoning, butter and milk, and the egg well beaten, mixing all thoroughly with a spoon. Fry in a frying basket, in deep fat.
SALT CODFISH SOUFFLÉ-To one pint of pared and quartered potatoes allow one cup of salt codfish broken into half-inch pieces. Place the fish and potatoes together in enough boiling water to cover them, and let them boil until the potatoes are done. Drain thoroughly, mash the potatoes and fish, and beat them well with a fork, adding one-half saltspoon of white pepper, one scant tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons of cream or rich sweet milk. The mass should be made light with vigorous stirring. Then beat in the well-stirred yolks of two eggs, and, lastly, put in the well-whipped whites without much stirring. Arrange the soufflé on a buttered fire-proof plate, and bake it brown. This will require about twenty minutes. Serve with cucumber pickles, pickled peppers, horseradish, or fresh cucumbers.
Two dishes from the same base: salt cod boiled with potato, mashed, enriched and either fried or baked. The variables that decide success are the salt level of the fish and how dry the mash is.
- Soak the fish firstNeither recipe says so, though many period cookbooks do direct that hard salt cod be freshened overnight in several changes of cold water, and boiling in "plenty of water" as directed here will draw out some salt as well. Modern hard-dried salt cod generally wants 12-24 hours of refrigerated soaking with changes of water; taste a shred before cooking and keep going if it stings. Skip it and both dishes risk being too salty to eat.
- Salt cod is not the same as freshIf you buy the boneless plank in a wooden box, it is heavily salted and stiff. Lightly salted, wet-packed bacalao from a Latin or Portuguese market needs less soaking. Do not substitute fresh cod, which carries none of the flavour and far too much water.
- QuantitiesA quart of sliced raw potatoes is roughly 1.25-1.5 lb; a large cup of shredded fish is perhaps 5-6 oz. The souffle's pint of quartered potatoes is around 12 oz. Neither recipe gives a yield; four servings is a reasonable estimate for each.
- A saltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. Note that the balls take salt "to taste" and the souffle takes none at all, which is right if the cod is properly salty.
- Dry the mashThe hinge for the fried balls. Drain the boiled potato and fish thoroughly and return the pan to low heat for a minute to steam off water before mashing. A wet mixture bursts in the fryer and drinks fat.
- Deep fat and the frying basketA soft dropped ball loses shape, so chill the mixture, shape it, and lower it gently rather than crowding a basket. Fry at 365-375F until deep gold, three to four minutes.
- "Bake it brown"The book gives no temperature; a hot oven, around 400F, should brown it in the twenty minutes given. It is more of a light fish pudding than a true souffle and will not climb far, but folding the whites in unstirred is what keeps it from turning to paste.
- The garnishes are not optionalPickles, horseradish and cucumber are there to cut a rich, salty, starchy dish. Something sharp on the plate is what makes the second helping possible.
Salt cod was the New England pantry staple par excellence, the domestic end of a fishery that had shipped dried cod from the Grand Banks since the seventeenth century, and codfish balls were a characteristic New England breakfast dish built from it, traditionally eaten with baked beans and brown bread on Sunday morning. Because the fish kept for long periods without ice, it appears in nineteenth-century books as a matter of course rather than as a delicacy, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s often give the same skeleton this one does: fish and potato boiled in one pot, mashed together, enriched with butter and egg. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in that same practical spirit, and the souffle variation here shows the era's habit of dressing a plain economical mixture in a French name to move it from the breakfast table to dinner.