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Salted Cod with Brown Butter
Soak the fish in cold water for two days, then scrape off the scales, clean and was thoroughly, and place over a slow fire until boiling. Move the kettle to the side of the fire, skim off the scum that may have risen to the top, and boil gently for ten minutes. Put a little butter in a fryingpan and place over the fire, when it is hot put in a few sprigs of parsley and fry until brown. Pour the butter and parsley over the fish and serve hot. Boiled Cod's Tongues with Egg Sauce Place the tongues in warm water and leave for a day and a half, changing the water once. Put a pan of water on the fire, and when it boils put in the tongues and boil them for ten minutes. Place a piece of toast on a dish, brush the tongues over with egg sauce, put them on the toast and serve.
A plain treatment of salt cod: long soaking, a gentle poach, and hot butter browned with parsley poured over at the table. Almost everything depends on the soak.
- The soak is the whole dishTwo days in cold water, with the water poured off and replaced at least three or four times, is what makes hard salt cod edible. Soak it in the refrigerator, not on the counter, and taste a corner of the raw flesh before cooking; it should read as seasoned, not saline.
- Buying itThe recipe assumes a stiff, bone-in, skin-on salt cod side. Modern boneless salt cod loin in a wooden box behaves the same way but needs less time, often 24 hours. Frozen or fresh cod needs no soaking at all and this method would fall apart with it.
- "Place over a slow fire until boiling"Bring it up slowly from cold water, then, as the recipe says, move the kettle to the side of the fire and keep it at a gentle boil rather than a hard one. Ten minutes at a true rolling boil will shred salt cod into threads.
- Scraping and cleaningDried salt cod is usually sold with the skin and scales on. Scrape the scales after the soak, when the skin has softened, and pull out the pin bones with pliers before poaching.
- The brown butterUse more butter than the word "little" suggests: about 4 tablespoons for two pounds of soaked fish. The recipe fries the parsley sprigs in the hot butter until brown, then pours both over the fish at once. Parsley holds water and will spit.
- Seasoning at the endDo not salt anything. A squeeze of lemon into the browned butter is period-appropriate and cuts the richness.
- YieldTwo pounds of dry salt cod rehydrates to roughly three pounds and serves four to six; boiled potatoes are a common accompaniment.
Salt cod was the workhorse fish of the North Atlantic economy for centuries, cured on the Newfoundland and New England banks and shipped worldwide because it kept without ice. It was familiar Lenten and Friday food, and to European and New England eaters alike a soaked cod under brown butter read as plain, respectable cooking. The butter-and-parsley finish, beurre noisette with herbs, is one common French answer to a lean white fish and does the work that fat has to do when the flesh itself has none.