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Codfish Hash
Mrs, N. P. Wilder.
One pint boiled picked codfish well freshened, one quart cold boiled chopped potatoes mixed well together, three slices salt pork freshened, cut in very small pieces and fried brown; remove half the pork, and add your fish and potatoes to the remainder; let it stand and steam five minutes without stirring; be careful not to let it burn; then add one-third cup milk and stir thoroughly; put the remainder of the pork around the edge of the spider, and a little butter over it; simmer it over a slow fire for half an hour, until a brown crust is formed, when turn it over on a platter and serve.
A salt cod hash from the era when dried fish hung in every New England pantry. The whole dish turns on two things: getting the salt out, and leaving the pan alone long enough to build a crust.
- "Freshened" means soakedSalt cod must be soaked in several changes of cold water, usually 12 to 24 hours in the refrigerator depending on thickness, then simmered gently until it flakes. Modern boneless salt cod loins are often more lightly cured than nineteenth-century dried fish, so taste a scrap before committing — under-soaked fish will make the whole pan inedible, over-soaked fish just needs seasoning.
- A spider is a skilletThe spider was a cast-iron frying pan, originally footed for hearth use. A 10-inch cast-iron skillet is the direct descendant and still the right vessel here, since the crust depends on even, retained heat.
- QuantitiesOne pint of picked fish is perhaps 10 oz flaked; work back from a piece of dry salt cod of roughly that weight and adjust, since yields vary with the cure. One quart of chopped cold boiled potatoes is around 1½ lb cooked, or about 2 lb raw. The two-to-one potato-to-fish ratio by volume is what keeps this from tasting like a salt lick.
- The porkThree slices of salt pork means fatback or streaky salt pork, itself soaked to draw the salt, diced small and rendered until the bits are brown and the fat has run. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the closest supermarket substitute; smoked bacon works but changes the flavor noticeably.
- Cold potatoes are not optionalFreshly boiled potatoes are wet and will turn the hash to paste. Boil them the day before, refrigerate, then chop — the drier starch is what browns.
- Don't stirThe five-minute steam and the half-hour simmer each happen untouched; the only stirring the recipe calls for is when the milk goes in between the two stages. Low heat and patience are the entire technique; if it smells like it is catching, lower the flame rather than moving the hash.
- The milkA third of a cup of milk is added once, after the initial steam, and stirred in before the crust forms. It is there for moisture and a little richness, not for a creamy texture.
- Turning it outTo "turn it over on a platter" means inverting the pan so the crust lands upward, like a cake. Loosen the edges first with a thin spatula, or serve it folded over in wedges instead.
- YieldProbably four as a supper dish, though the recipe gives no yield. Eggs and pickled beets are common New England accompaniments.
Salt cod hash belongs to the long New England habit of cooking around a barrel of dried fish, which kept for months without ice and was cheap enough to be a weekday staple well inland from the coast. The Grand Banks fishery made split, salted cod one of the region's great export commodities from the colonial period onward, and household cookery absorbed the leftovers of that trade — creamed codfish, codfish balls, codfish cakes, and hashes like this one, which stretch a modest amount of protein with potato and salt pork. The pattern of the recipe is thrift on every line: yesterday's boiled potatoes, fish that needed no refrigeration, and rendered pork fat doing the work of butter. Community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s, of which The Home Cook Book is a well-known example, collected such recipes under the names of the women who contributed them, which is why a supper dish arrives here credited to Mrs. N. P. Wilder rather than presented as a regional standard — though a regional standard is exactly what it was.