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Codfish Tongues with Brown Butter
Soak one pound salt codfish tongues in fresh water for two hours. Drain, then plunge in a quart boiling water for ten minutes. Drain well, place on a hot dish, sprinkle a teaspoon chopped parsley over and dredge one ounce capers on top. Place an ounce butter in a black frying pan and toss on the fire until it gets a nice brown colour, pour in a tablespoon good vinegar, toss well for three seconds, pour over the tongues and serve.
A short dish that lives or dies on two things: how much salt you pull out of the fish, and how far you take the butter. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: judge the soak by tasteTwo hours is a minimum for lightly cured tongues; heavily salted ones may need six to twelve hours in several changes of cold water, refrigerated. Nibble a raw sliver before cooking — if it makes you wince, keep soaking, because the ten-minute boil will not rescue it.
- Sourcing cod tonguesThe "tongue" is not really a tongue but a fleshy muscle from beneath the jaw, best known as a Newfoundland and Atlantic Canadian specialty and sold fresh or salted there; it is also eaten in Norway and Iceland. Salt cod cheeks, or thick pieces cut from a salt cod loin, behave much the same in this preparation.
- Ten minutes is for salt fish, not freshSalted, rehydrated cod holds together through a brief simmer where fresh fish would fall apart. Keep the water at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, and pull the pieces as soon as they are opaque and just yielding — gelatinous cuts like these turn slack if pushed much past that.
- "A black frying pan"Plain carbon steel or cast iron, blackened by use. The point is a dark surface you can watch butter brown against, and a pan that takes high heat. Any heavy skillet works; avoid nonstick, which discourages the fond that gives the butter its flavour.
- Brown butter, then vinegarThis is beurre noir: the butter is taken past foaming until the milk solids are dark brown, then acid is added to arrest the browning. The recipe keeps the pan on the fire, so work fast — it moves from brown to burnt in seconds, and the vinegar should be measured and to hand. Three seconds of tossing is not an exaggeration.
- Weights to volumesAn ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. An ounce of capers is roughly 3 tablespoons, drained. A quart of water is 4 cups, which will barely cover a pound of fish — use more if the pot is wide.
- Vinegar choice"Good vinegar" here most likely means wine vinegar rather than harsh distilled white. Cider vinegar also works. Distilled white will read as sour without any fruit behind it.
- YieldA pound of tongues serves two as a main course or four as a first course. Serve immediately — the browned butter dulls and the fish cools fast on a flat dish, which is why the original insists the platter be hot.
Cod tongues are a thrift dish that became a regional delicacy: when the Atlantic fishery split and salted cod for export, the heads were left behind, and the small muscle beneath the jaw was among the few scraps worth saving. In Newfoundland they are still eaten, usually floured and fried with pork scruncheons. Their appearance here, dressed with capers and black butter, shows what the book was doing em and finishing it with a French sauce, beurre noir, that classical kitchens paired with skate and brains for the same reason: browned butter and vinegar cut richness and flatter a soft, gelatinous texture. The pairing is a matter of technique rather than nationality, and the recipe assumes a reader who could buy salt cod tongues by the pound without comment.