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Salt Codfish Au Gratin
Rub between the hands one and a half pounds of shredded salt codfish, plunge it into a quart of boiling water for five minutes, drain on a sieve and press out the water. Heat an ounce of butter in a saucepan, add one ounce flour, stir well while heating for a minute, pour in two and a half gills hot milk, mix well until it comes to a boil. Add the codfish, season with a saltspoon each cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg, mix well and let cook for five minutes longer. Pour it into a baking dish, dredge two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese over, divide half an ounce of butter in very small bits on top, set in the oven for ten minutes, remove and serve.
A straightforward béchamel gratin whose success rests entirely on how salty the fish is when it goes into the sauce. Everything else is a matter of translating the measures.
- Soak the cod firstThe five-minute plunge in boiling water suffices only for the lightly cured, boneless shredded codfish once sold in wooden boxes. Modern hard salt cod (bacalao, klippfisk) needs 24 to 48 hours of soaking in the refrigerator with several changes of water before it is edible; taste a shred before proceeding.
- Gills and saltspoonsTwo and a half gills is about 1¼ cups of milk. A saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, so a quarter teaspoon each of cayenne and nutmeg — a real amount of cayenne for a dish this size, worth halving if you want the fish to show.
- Ounces are weightsAn ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, an ounce of flour is a scant ¼ cup: equal weights of butter and flour.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given at all. Ten minutes at 425F browns the cheese and butter without drying the sauce; if the gratin has cooled, give it longer at 375F and finish under the broiler.
- Shredded versus flaked"Shredded" codfish came ready-torn into fine threads. If you are working from a soaked fillet, poach it briefly, drain hard, and flake it coarsely — pressing out the water as directed matters, or the sauce will thin in the dish.
- ParmesanTwo tablespoons is a light dusting rather than a cheese crust. Grate it finely so it melts in the ten minutes allowed; pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch will sit on top looking dry.
- YieldA pound and a half of fish in this quantity of sauce serves four generously as a main course with potatoes or toast, six as a first course.
Salt cod was the great transatlantic staple long before it was a delicacy: dried on Newfoundland and New England flakes, it kept without refrigeration, travelled anywhere, and fed Catholic Europe through Lent and Friday abstinence. By the time this book was compiled, American grocers sold it boxed and pre-shredded, which is why the instruction here is likely to rub it between the hands rather than soak it overnight — the hard work, it seems, had been done at the packing house. The au gratin treatment, a white sauce under grated cheese and browned butter, is one familiar French way of making a preserved fish palatable, and its inclusion here shows the period's habit of presenting a thoroughly domestic ingredient in continental dress. Parmesan, then usually imported in whole wheels and grated to order, is the cheese called for.