Creamed Codfish
One and one-half cups of salt fish; one tablespoon of butter; on etablespoon of flour; one and one-half cup of milk; one egg. Separate the fish into very small pieces and leave in cold water for three hours, changing the water three times. Heat the milk in a double boiler. Add the codfish, well drained, and cook for ten minutes. Mix the butter with the flour until a smooth paste is formed, then stir it into the milk. When smooth and cream-like, take the dish from the heat, add the beaten egg, stir well and serve without further cooking, adding a sprinkling of pepper just before dishing. If cooked after the egg is added, the milk is liable to curdle. CODFISH À LA MODE-Pick up very fine and freshen one teacup of salt codfish; mix with two cups of mashed potatoes, one pint of cream or milk, two well-beaten eggs, one-half cup of butter, and a little salt and pepper. Bake in an earthen dish twenty or twenty-five minutes.
Two versions of the same New England standby: salt cod in a milk sauce, and a baked cod-and-potato pudding. The book's typesetting is rough here — the title is almost certainly "Creamed Codfish," and "on etablespoon of flour" is one tablespoon.
- The hinge: the egg goes in off the heatThe recipe says it plainly and it is the only thing that will ruin the dish. Once the beaten egg is stirred into the hot sauce, any further cooking curdles it into curds and whey. Pull the pan off the burner, stir the egg in, and serve immediately.
- Soaking time depends on your salt codThree hours with three changes of water suits the flaked, boxed salt fish common in 1911. Thick modern salt cod loin needs 24 to 36 hours in the refrigerator with the water changed three or four times. Taste a shred before you commit: it should be pleasantly salty, not harsh.
- "Salt fish" measured in cupsOne and a half cups of picked-apart soaked fish is roughly 6 to 8 oz of dry salt cod before soaking. Buy 8 oz and you will have enough.
- A teacupPeriod sources vary, but a teacup is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a modern cup. For the a la mode version that means very roughly 3 to 4 oz of dry salt cod.
- Double boilerUsed here to keep the milk from scorching and to hold the finished sauce below a simmer. A heavy saucepan over low heat works if you stir; a thin pan does not.
- The flour and butter go in rawKneading soft butter and flour into a paste and whisking it into hot liquid is beurre manié rather than a cooked roux. It thickens quickly but tastes faintly of flour unless you give it three or four minutes at a bare simmer before the egg goes in.
- Oven for the à la modeOven for the a la mode -- no temperature is given, as was usual in cookbooks of this date; reliable oven regulators were not yet standard equipment. A moderate oven, about 350F, for the stated 20 to 25 minutes, until set and lightly browned at the edges.
- That half cup of butterIn the baked version, half a cup of butter with two cups of mashed potato makes a very rich pudding. Two to four tablespoons gives a lighter result without changing the character of the dish.
- Yield and servingThe creamed version serves three to four, often ladled over buttered toast, split baking-powder biscuits, or boiled potatoes. The baked version serves four. No salt is called for in the first recipe, presumably because the fish supplies it -- taste before adding any.
Salt cod was the backbone of the American Atlantic economy long before it was a breakfast dish: cured on Newfoundland and Massachusetts flakes, shipped to the Caribbean and southern Europe, and kept in every northern pantry because it needed no ice. Creamed codfish on toast, and its baked cousin bound with mashed potato, are the household end of that trade — cheap protein stretched with milk, flour and potato, and eaten at breakfast or supper rather than dinner. Butterick published this book in 1911 as part of the pattern company's broader line of domestic manuals, aimed at a middle-class housekeeper who wanted plain, reliable, economical cooking, and a fish that arrived dry and kept for months fit that brief exactly. The instruction to soak in several changes of cold water rather than one long bath reflects hard-won practice: fresh water draws out salt faster than water already saturated with it.