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Confish a La Mode
Tea-cup codfish picked up fine, two cups mashed potatoes, one pint cream or milk, two eggs well beaten, half tea-cup butter, salt and pepper; mix well, bake in baking-dish from twenty to twentyfive minutes. -Mrs. E. L. Fay, New York City.
A salt-cod and potato pudding of the kind that appeared on Friday tables and breakfast sideboards across the nineteenth century. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no soaking instructions, both of which decide whether it succeeds.
- The hinge: soak the cod"Codfish" here almost certainly means salt cod rather than fresh; "picked up fine" is the usual period phrase for shredded salt fish. Soak it in several changes of cold water -- anything from a few hours to overnight, depending on how hard and heavily salted it is -- then simmer gently and flake before measuring. Salt cod used unsoaked will make the dish inedibly salty.
- Teacup measureA period teacup is not a standard cup. Period sources vary, putting it anywhere from about four to eight fluid ounces, so half a teacup of butter might be anything from 4 to 8 tablespoons. The measure is genuinely inexact; treat the butter as a range and taste.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350-375F, suits a custard-bound mixture of this kind; hotter and the eggs curdle at the edges before the centre sets.
- Liquid ratioA full pint of cream against only two cups of potato and a teacup of fish gives a very loose, almost spoonable pudding. If you want something that holds a cut edge, start with a cup of cream and add more only until the mixture drops thickly from the spoon.
- TimingTwenty to twenty-five minutes assumes a shallow dish. In anything deeper than about an inch and a half the centre will still be liquid; bake until the middle is just set and no longer wobbles as a mass, which may take 35-40 minutes.
- SaltSalt is listed, but add none until the soaked fish has been tasted. Well-soaked cod is still assertively seasoned, and mashed potato made with salted water compounds it.
- YieldServes four as a main dish, six as part of a larger breakfast or supper. A buttered 1 1/2-quart dish is about right.
The title is almost certainly "Codfish a la Mode" as set in type, with the C and the o running together in the original printing, and the French tag is doing what such tags usually did in American community cookbooks of the period: dressing a thrifty dish in company clothes. Salt cod was one of the great staples of the Atlantic trade and remained cheap and shelf-stable long after refrigeration reached the cities, which is why recipes for reviving it fill the fish chapters of nineteenth-century collections. Bound with potato, cream and egg and baked, it becomes a close relative of the New England codfish pudding and of the fishcake, the difference being only whether the mixture is fried in spoonfuls or set in a dish. That the contribution comes from a New York City subscriber is typical of the genre, which assembled recipes by mail from friends and relations scattered across the country.