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Salt Fish and Eggs
Pick up one pint of salt fish and soak over night in one pint of cold water. Next morning set this dish in another of hot water over the stove and let the fish cook twenty or thirty minutes. Now put the eggs-half a dozen-in a basin of boiling water, cover them and allow them to stand for ten minutes where the water will keep hot but not boil. In the meantime place one pint of milk in a saucepan over the stove; stir two full tablepoons of butter and one of flour together and mix it in with the milk when it begins to boil; season with salt and pepper, and set the pan back where the milk will just bubble, for two minutes. Drain the fish, put it into the milk and cook five minutes more. During this time put the eggs into cold water, carefully shell them, and keep them warm under a napkin. Pour the fish on a warm platter, put the eggs in a circle on top and serve at once.
A New England salt-cod supper dressed in cream sauce, with coddled eggs on top. Two things carry it: soaking the fish long enough, and never letting the sauce or the eggs come to a hard boil.
- What "one pint of salt fish" meansDry salt cod, picked apart into flakes and measured loose in a pint cup — roughly 8 oz by weight. Modern salt cod is often sold in thick, heavily cured fillets; break it up before measuring.
- Soak longer than overnightOne pint of cold water for one pint of fish is a light soak by present standards. Use enough water to cover generously, refrigerate, and change it two or three times over 12 to 24 hours, tasting a flake before you cook. Undersoaked cod will make the whole dish inedibly salty.
- "Set this dish in another of hot water"This is a improvised double boiler. Gentle heat keeps the flakes from tightening and going stringy; a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water does the same job.
- The eggs are coddled, not boiledSix eggs covered in just-boiled water off the heat for ten minutes gives firm whites and a yolk set but still slightly waxy. Straight from the refrigerator they will need closer to twelve. The cold-water dip is for shelling, so do it briefly rather than letting them chill through.
- The sauce is a rough béchamelTwo tablespoons butter to one of flour is butter-heavy and will not thicken much — expect a pouring sauce rather than a coating one. Equal parts by volume, about two tablespoons each to a pint of milk, gives a sauce that clings to the fish.
- Season at the endSalt the sauce only after the fish has gone in and cooked its five minutes. How much salt the cod carries varies enormously between brands and soaking times.
- YieldServes four as a main course with boiled potatoes, or six at breakfast. It does not hold; the sauce skins and the eggs toughen, which is why the original says serve at once.
Salt cod was the bulk protein of the American Northeast for generations before this book appeared — cured aboard the Banks fleet and at shore stations in and around Gloucester, shipped inland where fresh fish could not go, and cheap enough to be a Friday and Lenten staple in Catholic households and a plain weekday supper in Protestant ones. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, is generally said to have aimed its cook book at much the same middle-class housekeeper who bought its magazines, and this dish is characteristic of that audience: a shelf-stable ingredient, a milk sauce, and hard eggs arranged on top to make it look like a composed platter. The combination of creamed salt fish and eggs is old and widespread rather than attributable to any one cook, surviving today chiefly in the various regional dishes built on creamed cod on toast.