Creamed Cod on Toast

This is a tailpiece rather than a standalone recipe: it tells you what to do with the remains of a boiled or baked cod from the preceding page. Read it as a leftovers direction and supply the sauce yourself.

• What the sentence assumes"What remains" means cold cooked cod, whether fresh fish boiled in salted water or salt cod that has been soaked and simmered. Flake it off the bones in large pieces and pick carefully for pin bones and skin before it goes into the sauce.
• The cream sauce of the periodThe cream sauce -- "cream sauce" here means a medium white sauce, not cream: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, cooked until the flour loses its raw taste, seasoned with salt and white pepper, with nutmeg if you like it. Nothing in the sentence calls for heavy cream.
• RatioAbout 1 cup of sauce to 2 cups of flaked fish gives a mixture that holds on toast rather than running off it. Roughly 2 cups of fish and four slices of toast feed two as a supper dish.
• Fold, do not stirAdd the fish to the finished sauce off the heat and warm it through gently. Beating it about breaks the flakes into a paste, which is the difference between creamed cod and fish porridge.
• SaltIf the cod was salt cod, season the sauce only at the end. Even well-soaked fish carries enough salt to make an ordinarily seasoned sauce inedible.
• The toastUse firm bread, toasted dry and hot, and sauce it at the moment of serving. Buttering it first slows the sogginess a little.
• Leftover safetyCooked fish should have been refrigerated promptly and used within two days, and reheated until steaming through. Kitchens of this era kept fish in a cool larder for longer than would be sensible now.
• Common additionsA chopped hard-boiled egg, a spoonful of chopped parsley, or a little of the fish's cooking liquid stirred into the milk are all common with creamed fish and suit the dish.