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Brandade
(Montpellier.) Soak for three days 1 1/2 pounds of salt cod, renewing the water often. Drain it, cover with hot water, and boil 15 minutes. Remove the skin and bones and chop the fish, then fry it with 2 chopped onions and 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil. Cook 10 minutes, pound this all well, return to the fire and add the juice of 2 lemons, a tablespoonful of oil, and twice as much cream. Beat and stir and season it, adding mace and parsley and the juice of one more lemon. When perfectly smooth and well cooked, pile it on a plate and serve with a white sauce containing oysters, mushrooms, and shrimps. CARP (as cooked in Coblentz.).
Clean and cut into strips 2 pounds of carp or any white fish, add one glass of claret, 1/2 pint of consomme, salt, pepper, some parsley, thyme, and a clove, 1 cup of chopped mushrooms, 1 carrot, and 1 onion, shredded. Cover, and let it simmer for an hour. Add a tablespoonful of capers and serve, poured on slices of toast.
Two entries run together here: a Languedoc brandade and a Rhineland braise of carp. Both need timing adjustments more than anything else.
- Soaking the salt codThree days suited the bone-hard, heavily salted cod of 1900. Most salt cod sold now is lighter; 24 to 48 hours in the refrigerator with four or five changes of water is usually enough. Taste a sliver raw-soaked before you cook: it should be pleasantly seasoned, not aggressively salty.
- Poach, do not boilFifteen minutes at a rolling boil shreds the fish and toughens it. Bring the water barely to a tremble, slide the cod in off the heat, and let it stand 8 to 10 minutes until it flakes.
- The hinge: keep everything warmBrandade is an emulsion of fish, oil and dairy. If the pounded cod cools, or the oil and cream go in cold, the paste breaks and turns oily. Warm the oil and cream, and work over the lowest possible heat.
- PoundingA mortar or a stand mixer with the paddle gives the right slightly fibrous texture. A food processor will do it in seconds but turns the fish gluey if left running; pulse and stop early.
- Vague quantities"A tablespoonful of oil, and twice as much cream" means about 2 tablespoons of cream — a small amount for 1 1/2 lb of fish, so expect a stiff paste and add more warm cream if you want it spreadable. The mace and parsley are unmeasured; a scant 1/4 teaspoon of mace is plenty.
- Three lemons is a lotThe juice of two lemons, then one more, will overwhelm 1 1/2 lb of cod. Add the juice of one, taste, and go from there.
- The oyster sauceIf you make the white sauce, add the shucked oysters at the very end and give them a minute or two off the boil, just until the edges ruffle. Held longer they shrink and go rubbery.
- Yield and servingThe brandade serves four to six as a first course, warm, with toast or crusty bread. It thickens as it cools and reheats gently with a spoonful of cream.
- The carp: an hour is far too longTwo pounds of fish cut in strips is cooked through in 12 to 20 minutes in simmering liquid. Build the braise — wine, consommé, vegetables, herbs — simmer that for 30 to 40 minutes to draw out flavour, then add the fish for the last quarter hour. "One glass of claret" is unspecified; period usage ranges from a small wineglassful of about 2 fl oz up to a tumbler, so start with 4 to 5 fl oz of dry red and judge by the liquid level.
- Carp in practiceFarmed carp can taste muddy and is heavily boned; any firm white fish works, as the original allows. Skin-on fillets hold together better than skinless in a braise.
Brandade is the salt-cod purée of lower Languedoc, and the name is generally traced to the Provençal brandar, to stir or agitate — the dish is defined by the beating that binds flaked cod with oil into a paste. Nîmes is usually given the strongest claim to it, with Montpellier, as here, and the wider Gard and Hérault country close behind; the tradition holds that the salt barges of Aigues-Mortes and Peccais carried salt out to the Atlantic fisheries and brought dried cod back inland, which is why a fish from Newfoundland and Norway became a staple hundreds of miles from any cod. Purists argue over what belongs in it — garlic is disputed, and milk is often included; the cream in this version, and the mace and lemon, are often said to mark it as a softened restaurant style. With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre of turn-of-the-century American travel cookery, collecting dishes town by town, which explains the abrupt jump from Montpellier to a carp "as cooked in Coblentz" — the Rhine and Moselle have cooked freshwater fish in red wine for centuries, and Karpfen blau and its wine-braised relatives were standard fare in the region's inns.