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Steamed Cod Fish
The best piece of cod for steaming is the tail end and it should be taken from the steamer as soon as the flesh begins to draw away from the bones, which will be from one hour to one and one-half hours, according to thickness. After carefully removing the skin and arranging on a hot platter, a few spoonfuls of sauce should be used to mark the fish and a garnish of white parsley and cut lemon added.
A plain method piece rather than a full recipe: the book assumes you own a fish steamer and know which sauce you mean to serve. Two things need translating for a modern cook — the timing, which is far too long, and the missing sauce.
- The timing is the one thing to ignoreAn hour to an hour and a half will reduce cod to cotton wool. A thick tail piece steams through in roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at its deepest point; a 1½-inch piece is done in about 15 minutes. The book's own doneness cue — flesh just beginning to loosen from the bone — is the reliable instruction, not the clock.
- Why the original is so longWhy the original may be so long -- Steamers of this kind were often a covered pan set over another pan of water, or a fish kettle with a perforated plate, running at a bare simmer rather than a hard boil, so heat reached the fish slowly. Even allowing for that, the stated time is far longer than a tail piece needs, and the recipe's own cue — flesh just beginning to draw from the bone — sits oddly with it.
- The tail endSound advice and still true. The tail is a single even-tapering piece with less of the thick shoulder muscle, so it cooks uniformly and holds together. A centre-cut steak or a loin fillet works too but will finish faster at the thin edge.
- Skin and boneSteam with the skin on — it holds the flesh together and peels off in one sheet while hot. Lift the piece on the steamer plate or a folded strip of parchment; a spatula alone will break it.
- The sauce is unspecifiedThe usual accompaniments to plain steamed or boiled cod in household books of this general period were egg sauce (béchamel with chopped hard-boiled egg), drawn butter, or hollandaise; any of these will suit. 'A few spoonfuls to mark the fish' suggests a ribbon of sauce over the top rather than a flooded plate, with the rest passed at table.
- White parsleyNot a known variety. It most likely means the pale inner sprigs of curled parsley, though the term is not explained in the text. Ordinary curly or flat parsley is a straight substitute.
- YieldA cod tail of about 2 lb on the bone feeds three to four as a main course. Salt the fish lightly before steaming; steamed fish tastes flat otherwise, and the sauce cannot rescue it.
Steamed cod belongs to the invalid-and-plain-cookery tradition that runs through American and British household manuals: fish cooked without fat, served with a butter or egg sauce, and regarded as digestible food suitable for the sick and the elderly. Cod itself was the cheap and abundant fish of the North Atlantic coast in this period, sold fresh in eastern cities and salted everywhere else, and a cookbook aimed at the general housekeeper would expect it far more often than any luxury species. The insistence on a hot platter, a marked ribbon of sauce and a parsley-and-lemon garnish reflects the same era's conviction that plain food still had to be presented formally he is not.