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Sandwich (Between toasted and lightly)
Between toasted and lightly buttered slices of white bread place hot creamed codfish. Put a tablespoonful of the codfish on top and sprinkle finely chopped hard-boiled egg over the codfish and garnish with a sprig of parsley and a pickle. Serve as soon as made.
An open-faced luncheon sandwich that depends entirely on the creamed codfish being made properly and used hot. The recipe assumes you already have a pan of it on the stove.
- What "creamed codfish" meansSalt cod, soaked to draw out the salt, then flaked and folded into a medium white sauce. Freshen the fish in several changes of cold water for 8-12 hours, taste it before saucing, and do not salt the sauce until you have.
- If you use fresh cod insteadPoach it, flake it, and salt the sauce properly. The dish will be milder and looser than the original intends, since salt cod holds its shape and carries far more savour.
- Sauce consistency is the hingeIt needs to be thick enough to sit on toast without soaking through, roughly the body of a spoonable gravy. Two tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup of milk makes a thick sauce that will hold; thinner and the sandwich collapses before it reaches the table.
- Toast, then butter, then fill immediately"Serve as soon as made" is the operative instruction. Buttering the toast seals it slightly against the sauce, and the whole thing is only good for a few minutes.
- The constructionRead as a filled sandwich with a spoonful of the same codfish spooned over the top slice, then the egg, parsley and pickle. Topped and garnished this way it would be awkward to pick up, though the recipe does not say how it was eaten.
- Hard-boiled eggChop it fine so it reads as a garnish rather than a second filling. One egg dresses three or four sandwiches.
- The pickleA period convention on cream-sauce dishes, and it earns its place: a sharp cucumber pickle or a few slices of dill cut the richness.
- YieldRoughly a cup of creamed codfish fills and tops about four sandwiches; the quantity of soaked fish needed is a matter of estimate. Serve for lunch or supper with nothing more than soup.
Creamed salt codfish on toast was a New England breakfast and supper staple long before it appeared between slices of bread, and its logic is preservation: dried and salted cod kept well in a barrel, travelled inland, and cost little, so it fed households year-round and, in observant homes, often served as a Friday and Lenten dish. This sandwich book belongs to a moment when American cooks were rapidly rebuilding familiar hot dishes as sandwiches for luncheons and teas, so an old chafing-dish standby gets toast, a chopped egg and a pickle. The garnishes are typical of the era's serving style, where a sprig of parsley and a pickle were the expected finish on almost any plate of pale creamed food.