No. 1144

Salt Codfish a la Villageoise—Baked

Morue Salee au Gratin a la Villageoise

Cut and pare the codfish into two inch square pieces, soak them for eighteen hours, then lay them in a saucepan and cover with enough water to bathe them; heat the liquid without boiling and keep it in this state for half an hour, drain and remove the skin and bones from the fish, shred it well and set in a saucepan to pound with a wooden spoon, and when mashed to a paste dilute with a few spoonfuls of bechamel (No. 409), reduced and thickened; season to taste; add two ounces of butter divided into small parts and the third of its quantity of chopped potatoes; finish with cream. Season the preparation nicely, adding a pinch of cayenne pepper, then pour it all into a pie dish, smooth the surface and dust over with grated parmesan; sprinkle with melted butter and bake in a moderate oven.

← No. 1143 Salt Codfish Lyonnese Style Cod, Haddock & Halibut No. 1145 Codfish Cakes and Balls →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked brandade in all but name, from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894). The whole dish turns on heat control during the soaking and poaching: salt cod that boils turns to stringy threads and will never pound into a smooth paste.

Never let the poaching water boil"Heat the liquid without boiling and keep it in this state for half an hour" means holding the water at roughly 160-170F, well below a simmer. Boiling tightens and shreds the muscle fibres, and the fish will refuse to mash into a paste.
The eighteen-hour soakChange the water three or four times over the eighteen hours, in the refrigerator rather than on the counter. Thick loin pieces of heavily salted cod may want a full twenty-four; taste a sliver of the raw soaked fish before poaching, and if it is still aggressively salty, keep soaking.
Béchamel No. 409Ranhofer's béchamel is a butter-and-flour roux moistened with milk, simmered and strained. An ordinary well-seasoned béchamel, cooked down until it coats a spoon heavily, does the job here; it is a binder, not a sauce, so err on the thick side.
"The third of its quantity of chopped potatoes"Ambiguous in the original as to whether the third is reckoned against the fish or the whole mixture, and whether the potatoes are raw or cooked. Read it as cooked potato, about one part potato to three parts pounded fish by volume; raw potato would not cook through in a gratin dish.
A moderate ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; "moderate" is conventionally read today as about 350F. The mixture is already cooked through, so the bake is only to heat it and colour the parmesan crust — twenty to thirty minutes, with a minute under the broiler if the top is still pale.
Season at the end, and taste first"Season to taste" is doing real work: depending on how thoroughly the cod was desalted, the dish may need no added salt at all. Season after the béchamel, butter and cream are in.
Pounding by handThe wooden spoon against the side of the pan is what gives brandade its slightly fibrous texture. A food processor will do it in seconds but tends to turn the potato gluey; a stand mixer with the paddle is the better compromise.
YieldRanhofer gives no quantity of fish (only the two ounces of butter). A pound of dry salt cod, once soaked, should fill a shallow two-quart pie dish and serve about six as a first course or four as a main.

A Little History

Salt cod pounded with fat and aromatics is the Provençal and Languedocien brandade, and Ranhofer's tag à la villageoise — in the village manner — signals the rustic, potato-stretched version rather than the pure fish-and-oil kind. The potato is what makes it a country dish: it bulks out an expensive, long-keeping preserved fish into something that feeds a table. That salt cod occupies pages of a book written for Delmonico's is a reminder of how central it still was in the 1890s, both as Lenten and Friday food in a heavily Catholic New York and as a staple of the Atlantic trade that had shipped dried Newfoundland and New England cod around the world for three centuries. Ranhofer's contribution is the finish — béchamel, cream and a parmesan gratin — which lifts a fisherman's preparation into something a restaurant could plate.