Cut the codfish into transversal slices; season each with salt and pepper, and saturate with oil, then broil them over a slow fire; dress the pieces on a very hot dish, garnish around with thin slices of broiled ham or bacon, and sprinkle over butter mixed with fine herbs, lemon juice, capers, and finely chopped pickled gherkins.
A plain grilled cod steak dressed with a compound butter, from Ranhofer's Delmonico's book. Almost everything hinges on managing the heat and not overcooking the fish.
Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a nearly complete record of his kitchen, with more than 3,500 numbered receipts arranged by section and given in both French and English. This one belongs to a long run of cod preparations, and its logic is thoroughly French: fresh cod is lean, mild and prone to dryness, so it is paired with the fat of cured pork and finished with a herb butter sharpened by lemon, capers and gherkins — the same acid-and-salt scaffolding that carries a sauce ravigote or a grenobloise. The name gives away the substitution built into the dish: petit salé ou jambon, salt pork or ham, whichever the larder held.