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Codfish Puffs
Mrs. Banks.
Recipe the same as for codfish balls put in an earthen baking plate; smooth over the top, and put over some butter, and then in a hot oven to bake.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it takes the book's codfish ball mixture and bakes it in a dish instead of frying it in spoonfuls. Everything hinges on the salt cod being properly freshened and the mixture staying loose enough to puff.
- The base mixtureNineteenth-century codfish ball recipes generally combine flaked salt cod with hot mashed potato, often in roughly equal volumes, bound with a beaten egg or two and a lump of butter and seasoned mainly with pepper; proportions vary from book to book. For a baked dish, keep it on the soft side — stiff enough to hold a shape but not dense, or it will set into a brick rather than rise.
- Salt cod firstDried salt cod must be soaked before use: 8 to 24 hours in cold water in the refrigerator, changing the water three or four times, then simmered gently until it flakes. Taste it before mixing. Modern salt cod varies enormously in saltiness, and no salt should be added to the dish until you have.
- "A hot oven"Best read as somewhere around 425 to 450F. Fairly high heat helps it brown and rise rather than merely dry out. Bake until well risen and browned on top; for a 1 1/2-inch depth expect something in the region of 25 to 30 minutes.
- Earthen baking plateA shallow glazed earthenware or stoneware dish, closer to a modern pie plate than a deep casserole. Any 9-inch shallow baking dish works; ceramic or glass holds heat more evenly than thin metal here.
- The butter on topNot a garnish. Dot small pieces over the smoothed surface so it melts and bastes the top into a browned crust. About 2 tablespoons for a 9-inch dish.
- Why it puffsSuch lift as it gets comes from the egg in the mixture, helped by steam, so the eggs should be well beaten. Serve directly from the oven — an egg-lifted dish of this kind will settle as it stands.
- Yield and servingA 9-inch dish made from about 1 lb of soaked cod and 2 cups of mashed potato should serve four to six. Codfish balls were breakfast or supper food; period sources sometimes pair the mixture with cream or an egg sauce.
Salt cod was a cheap and reliable protein in American kitchens, kept as stiff dried planks in the pantry and freshened as needed, and codfish balls were its most familiar domestic form — traditionally a New England Sunday-morning dish, which is often said to be because the fish could be soaked overnight without breaking the Sabbath. Baking the same mixture in a dish, as Mrs. Banks does here, dodges the fuss and spitting fat of frying dozens of balls and turns a workaday breakfast into something that could go to the table whole. Its appearance under a named contributor is characteristic of The Home Cook Book, one of the charitable compilation cookbooks of the 1870s in which local women each gave a receipt, so the same dish often turns up two or three times with small variations and a different signature attached.