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Codfish Omelet
2 cups hot mashed potato 1 cup shredded codfish, scalded and drained 2 eggs, separated Pepper to taste 1 tablespoon. Mazola Combine the codfish and potato with the egg yolks beaten light. Fold in the egg whites and spread in a medium-sized frying pan in which the Mazola has been heated. Make the mixture quite thin, cook until well browned, fold over, slide onto a platter and garnish with parsley. This is particularly good served with Fried Tomatoes or Spanish sauce.
A salt-cod-and-potato cake cooked in the manner of an omelet, from a corn-oil promotional booklet. The whole thing turns on how much salt you leave in the fish.
- "Shredded codfish" means salt codThis is dried salted cod, sold in boxes or as whole planks, not fresh fish. Scalding once and draining, as written, removes only some of the salt; taste the fish before mixing and repeat the scald in fresh water if it is still aggressive. That is why the recipe seasons with pepper only.
- MazolaMazola was and is corn oil, the product this booklet was written to sell. Any neutral oil works. One tablespoon in a medium skillet is scant for a mixture this dense — two will keep it from sticking and give a better crust.
- Use the potato hotHot mashed potato blends with the yolks and holds the cake together; cold potato goes gluey and refuses to spread. Mash it without milk or butter if you can, since extra liquid makes the mixture slack.
- "Make the mixture quite thin"Spread it thin, no more than about half an inch deep across the pan. Thicker and the centre stays pasty by the time the underside browns.
- Heat and timingMedium heat, roughly 6 to 8 minutes for a solid brown crust, then fold. High heat scorches the potato before the egg sets. Do not stir it once it is in the pan — this is a set cake, not a scramble.
- Folding the whitesThe beaten whites lighten a mixture that would otherwise be dense hash. Fold them in at the last moment and get the pan hot before you start beating them, or the lift is lost by the time it cooks.
- YieldServes two generously, three modestly, as a breakfast or supper dish. The suggested fried tomatoes or Spanish sauce are there to supply the acid the salt fish wants.
Salt cod was for centuries among the cheapest reliable proteins in the American Northeast, kept dry in the pantry and revived with water when needed, and New England breakfast tables produced an entire family of dishes from it: codfish balls, creamed cod on toast, codfish hash. This version borrows the shape and the beaten whites of an omelet to stretch two eggs across three cups of fish and potato. The repeated naming of Mazola marks the page as a manufacturer's cookbook -- Corn Products Refining Company promoted its corn oil in exactly this way, publishing recipe booklets in which the brand appears in the ingredient list rather than a generic "oil," a common advertising practice of the early twentieth century as branded shortenings and oils displaced lard and butter in the American kitchen.