No. 1143

Salt Codfish Lyonnese Style

Morue Salee a la Lyonnaise

Put two pounds of codfish to soak for eighteen hours after paring well the surface; change the water every six hours, then place the fish in a saucepanful of cold water, bring to boiling point and set it on one side of the range to let bubble only without boiling for half an hour, then drain it off. Mince finely half a pound of white onions; fry them slowly in four ounces of butter and half a gill of olive oil on a very slack fire so that the onions cook while acquiring a golden color; add to it the well drained and shredded fish removing all the bones and skin, toss the whole for ten minutes over a brisk fire, adding at the last moment a pinch of pepper, and a crushed and chopped clove of garlic, also a spoonful of mustard and a dash of vinegar. Dress and surround with boiled potatoes cut in slices and fried in butter.

← No. 1142 Salt Codfish, Spanish Style Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1144 Salt Codfish a la Villageoise—Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is sound and needs almost no translation, but two of its instructions do real work: the long soak and the refusal to let the fish boil. Both determine whether you get flakes or shreds of salty rubber.

Never let it boilBring the soaked fish just to boiling, then move the pan to the coolest corner of the heat, where it should barely shiver rather than bubble, for half an hour. Salt cod that actually boils tightens and turns stringy, and no amount of butter later will fix it.
The soak is not optionalEighteen hours with a change of water every six is right for thick, hard, bone-dry salt cod. Modern lightly salted or vacuum-packed cod (bacalao at the fish counter) is much wetter and may need only 12 hours; taste a corner of the raw fish after soaking, and if it is still aggressively salty, keep going.
Paring the surfaceThis means trimming the dry, discolored skin side and any fin edges before soaking, not skinning the fish. Skin and bones come out later, after poaching, when they lift away easily.
Half a gill of olive oilA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup. With the four ounces of butter (another half cup) that is about three-quarters of a cup of fat for two pounds of fish; scaling it back by a third still works.
A very slack fireLow heat, and slow. The onions should go blond and sweet over 20 to 30 minutes without browning at the edges. The later toss over a brisk fire is medium-high, and ten minutes is the outside limit.
A spoonful of mustardRead this as roughly a tablespoon of smooth prepared mustard. Add it off the direct heat with the vinegar, as the recipe directs, at the last moment.
Salt at the table, if at allRanhofer adds no salt, only pepper (with garlic, mustard and vinegar). Even well-soaked cod carries salt, and the dish is usually seasoned enough as written.
YieldTwo pounds of dry salt cod gains a good deal of weight in soaking and serves four to six with the fried potatoes.

A Little History

Anything à la lyonnaise in a nineteenth-century French kitchen meant onions, generally with butter and a sharpening of vinegar at the end, and the label attached to potatoes, tripe, sausage and salt cod alike. Salt cod belongs in Lyon by way of the inland trade in dried Atlantic fish, which reached far from any coast and made cod the standard Friday and Lenten protein across Catholic Europe for centuries. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a comprehensive record of that French repertoire for American use; his salt cod chapter runs through Spanish, Lyonnaise and Villageoise treatments in sequence, which is a fair picture of how many ways a cheap preserved fish had to be dressed up to stay interesting.