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Stewed Codfish
Take a piece of boiled fish, remove the skin and bones, and pick into flakes; put these into a stew pan with a little butter, pepper, salt, minced parsley, cayenne, and the juice of a lemon. Put on the fire, and when the contents of the pan are quite hot the fish is quite ready to serve.
A leftovers dish rather than a from-scratch one: it assumes yesterday's boiled cod is sitting in the larder. The whole point is speed, since the fish is already cooked.
- Start with cooked fish"A piece of boiled fish" means fish already poached; the recipe gives no weight, but about 1 lb of cooked cod will serve two. Fish that has been allowed to cool tends to flake more cleanly than fish handled hot.
- The hinge: heat, do not cookEverything in the pan is already cooked. Warm it over low heat just until steaming, two or three minutes, turning the flakes with a spatula rather than stirring. Any real simmering and the cod tightens into cotton wool.
- Butter quantity"A little butter" is unquantified; enough to coat and gloss, roughly 2 tbsp for a pound of fish, suits the dish. The recipe puts fish and butter into the pan together, though melting the butter first makes the flakes easier to coat.
- Cayenne and pepper togetherThe recipe lists plain pepper and cayenne separately, so both are intended: one for depth, one for a sharp back-note. A pinch of cayenne, no more; it should not be identifiable as heat.
- Lemon at the endLemon -- The recipe adds the juice of a whole lemon in the pan before heating; adding it off the heat at the end is an option if you prefer a brighter acidity. Reduce to half a lemon if your piece of fish is small.
- Salt with careIf the fish was boiled in salted water, or if you are using salt cod that has been soaked and poached, taste before adding any salt at all.
- ServingThe recipe gives no yield; a pound of cooked fish will do for two as a light main, or four on toast as a savoury or breakfast dish. Buttered toast points or plain boiled potatoes suit it.
Boiled fish was a fixture of American and British tables through the nineteenth century — plainly cooked, served with an egg or butter sauce — so cold cooked fish would often have been to hand. Recipes of this shape appear under many names, from creamed codfish to fish hash, and cod in particular was cheap, abundant on the North Atlantic coast and available salted year-round, which is why it turns up so often as the default white fish in period cookbooks. The technique here — flakes warmed in butter, sharpened with lemon, parsley and cayenne — applies the seasoning logic of a fish sauce directly to the fish itself.