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Codfish Steaks with Brown Butter
Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, three slices fresh codfish steaks one inch in thickness. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a large frying pan; place in the steaks, one beside another, and slowly fry for ten minutes on each side. Remove with a skimmer, place on a hot dish. Set the pan on the fire, add half ounce butter, toss on the fire until brown, then squeeze in the juice of half a sound lemon, toss once more, pour it over the fish and serve.
A plain sauté finished with beurre noisette. The one thing to change is the timing: twenty minutes total will leave modern cod dry and flaking apart in the pan.
- Cook it far lessA one-inch cod steak needs roughly 4 to 5 minutes per side over medium heat, not the twenty minutes given. Ten minutes a side drives out the moisture and the flesh collapses when you try to lift it. Standard guidance is an internal 145F; cooks who want it moister pull it at 130-135F.
- Cod steaksThese are cross-cut slices through the bone, not fillets. Most fish counters now sell loin or fillet portions; ask for centre-cut pieces an inch thick so they hold together, and cook skin-side first if the skin is on.
- Butter quantitiesHalf an ounce is one tablespoon. The tablespoon and a half for frying is scant for three steaks in a large pan; add a spoonful of neutral oil so the butter does not blacken before the fish is done.
- Brown butterOnce the fresh butter foams and the milk solids turn hazelnut brown, it goes from nutty to burnt in seconds. Pull the pan off the heat before adding the lemon juice, which will spit.
- "A sound lemon"Simply an unblemished, unshrivelled one. Half a lemon gives roughly a tablespoon of juice.
- SkimmerA flat perforated lifter. A wide fish slice does the same job and supports the steak better.
- White pepperProbably specified so no dark flecks show against the white fish. Black pepper has a sharper, less musty flavour than white, but will serve here if appearance does not concern you.
- YieldThree steaks, three servings. Boiled potatoes and a green vegetable would suit it; the browned butter is the whole sauce.
Cod steaks with brown butter is a French method in an American book: beurre noisette with lemon is a classic finish for a plainly cooked white fish, and is related to the treatments the professional repertoire of the period called meunière (where the fish is floured before frying) and au beurre noir (where the butter is taken darker still). Filippini's International Cook Book, published in the first decade of the twentieth century, drew on the Delmonico's kitchen where he had worked, and this is the sort of dish that translated easily from a New York restaurant range to a home stove: three cuts of a fish that was cheap and plentiful on the Atlantic coast, dressed with nothing more than butter and citrus. That cod was sold in thick bone-in steaks rather than boneless fillets reflects a time when fish came whole to the shop and was cut across the body in front of the customer.