No. 1140

Fresh Codfish, Slices a la Hollandaise

Morue Fraiche Tranches a la Hollandaise.

Have some slices of codfish, cook them by throwing over them some very salty boiling water and keeping it near the boiling point for half an hour; when done, drain and dress in the center of a dish over a folded napkin, surrounding the fish with branches of parsley. Serve separately small three-quarters of an inch in diameter balls of potatoes, cooked in salted water, drained and laid in a vegetable dish with sufficient melted butter poured over to cover.

← No. 1139 Fresh Cod's Head, Egg Sauce Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1141 Fresh Cod's Tongues with Black Butter or Cho →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain poached fish from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), where "à la Hollandaise" means the Dutch treatment — fish in salted water, potatoes, melted butter — and not the egg-and-butter emulsion the name suggests today.

Half an hour is far too longCod slices an inch or so thick are done in 8-12 minutes at a bare simmer; the flesh should just separate into flakes at the bone. Held near boiling for thirty minutes the muscle fibres contract and expel their moisture, and the fish turns dry and cottony.
"Near the boiling point" is the real instructionRanhofer wants the water brought to a boil, poured over, then held below a rolling boil; the book gives no temperature. Agitation breaks the slices apart and clouds them with albumin scum.
How salty is "very salty"The recipe does not say. A tablespoon of salt per quart is a reasonable reading, enough that the fish seasons itself as it cooks; anything approaching seawater strength (about 3 percent) is the upper limit.
The sauce is just butterNo egg yolks, no lemon, no emulsion. Melt good unsalted butter and pour it over the potatoes to cover — a modern reader looking for sauce hollandaise here will be looking in the wrong century.
Potato ballsThree-quarter-inch spheres are cut with a large melon baller (a Parisienne scoop) from peeled raw potatoes. A firm waxy variety holds the shape; floury bakers collapse. Boil in salted water until just tender, 8-10 minutes.
The folded napkinA cloth napkin under the fish absorbs the poaching water that continues to weep out, so the platter does not flood. It is a service convention of the period, not decoration; a rack or a doubled paper towel does the same job.
YieldThe original gives none. Figure one 6-8 oz slice per person, and about two medium potatoes per person for the garnish.

A Little History

In nineteenth-century French service, à la hollandaise attached to fish meant the Dutch manner of eating it: poached in salted water, sent out unsauced on a napkin, with plain boiled potatoes and a boat of melted butter alongside. The two usages coexisted, the older manner alongside the yolk-thickened sauce. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, catalogued both usages in The Epicurean, and this entry sits among a long run of fresh cod preparations — head with egg sauce, tongues in black butter — that reflect how completely a whole cod was used in an American kitchen with access to the New England fishery. Fresh cod, as distinct from the salt cod that dominated inland trade, was a marker of coastal-city cooking.