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Cod Baked with Tomato Sauce
Skin a tail piece of cod, a thick slice of halibut or any smaller firm white fleshed fish, lay it on a baking pan and baste with about half a cupful of tomato sauce. Bake in a hot oven until the flesh begins to draw from the bones, basting every ten minutes with a little of the sauce. Keep the remainder hot and serve in a boat with the fish.
A short, sound method that assumes you already have tomato sauce on the stove. The only real question is how hot and how long.
- "A hot oven"Read this as 425-450F. At that heat a 1 1/2-inch cod or halibut steak takes roughly 12-18 minutes; a thicker tail piece 20-25. The doneness cue given in the original is reliable: the flesh loosens from the bone and flakes.
- Basting every ten minutesWith modern oven timings you will get one basting at most on a steak. Brush the fish generously at the start instead, and add a spoonful of sauce halfway through if it looks dry.
- The sauceThe recipe assumes a tomato sauce you already have to hand, and period versions varied from thin purees to sauces thickened with flour and butter. Whatever yours is, a thick sauce will scorch at 450F rather than baste; thin it with water or fish stock until it pours from a spoon.
- Half a cupfulThis is the basting allowance, used a little at a time; the text says to keep "the remainder" hot for the table, without saying how much that is. If you want a generous boat of sauce, make more than the half cup.
- "Serve in a boat"A sauce boat, the small lipped jug that was standard on a Victorian and Edwardian table. Any small pitcher does.
- Tail piece of codTail cuts are thinner and cook faster than the loin. A center-cut fillet or steak of 6-8 oz per person is easier to time; boneless fillets lose the "draws from the bones" test, so go by opacity and flake instead.
- Pan and stickingLine the pan or oil it well. Tomato sauce plus high heat plus lean white fish welds to bare metal, and the fish tears when you lift it.
- YieldUnstated. A 2 lb tail piece or two thick halibut steaks serves four with the sauce and a plain starch.
Tomato sauce with baked fish is common in American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century, a period in which canned tomatoes were becoming a year-round pantry staple rather than a late-summer crop. The recipe's shape is telling: it does not give a sauce recipe at all, apparently because a general-purpose tomato sauce was expected to be in the reader's repertoire already. Cod and halibut were mainstays of the Atlantic coast trade, sold in thick cross-cut slices and tail pieces of the kind described. The instruction to serve the remaining sauce separately in a boat reflects the table conventions of the era, sauces being passed apart from the dish.