Boiled Codfish (Salt)
Product Description
This recipe is taken directly from the book, "Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery" by Marion Harland. Published in Toronto by Rose Publishing Company, circa 1900.
Boiled Codfish. (Salt.)
Put the fish to soak over night in lukewarm water - as early as eight o'clock in the evening. Change this for more warm water at bed-time and cover closely. Change again in the morning and wash off the salt. Two hours before dinner take out the cod, examine to see that no crystals of salt adhere to the under part, and plunge into very cold water. This makes it firm. Finally, set over the fire with enough lukewarm water to cover it, and boil for half an hour. Drain well; lay it in a hot dish, and pour over it egg sauce prepared in the foregoing receipt (following), only substituting the yolks of two hard boiled eggs, rubbed to a paste with butter, for the beaten raw egg.
This is a useful recipe for country housekeepers who can seldom procure fresh cod. Salt mackerel, prepared in the same way, will well repay the care and time required, so superior is it to the Friday's dish of salt fish, as usually served.
Should the codfish left over be used for fish balls - as it should be - it will be found that the sauce which has soaked into it while hot has greatly improved it.
Have ready a sauce prepared thus:-
To one gill boiling water add as much milk, and when it is scalding hot, stir in - leaving the saucepan on the fire - two tablespoonfuls of butter, a little at a time that it may melt without oiling, a tablespoonful of flour previously wet with cold water, and as this thickens, two beaten eggs. Season with salt and chopped parsley, and when, after one good boil, you withdraw it from the fire, add a dozen capers, or pickled nasturtium seeds, or, if you prefer, a spoonful of vinegar in which celery seeds have been steeped. Put the fish into a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it. Some serve in a butter-boat; but I fancy that the boiling sauce applied to the steaming fish imparts a richness it cannot gain later. Garnish with sprigs of parsley and circles of hard-boiled eggs, laid around the edges of the dish.
Codfish Balls.
Prepare the fish precisely as for boiling whole. Cut in pieces when it has been duly washed and soaked, and boil twenty minutes. Turn off the water, and cover with fresh water from the boiling tea-kettle. Boil twenty minutes more, drain the fish very dry, and spread upon a dish to cool. When perfectly cold, pick to pieces with a fork, removing every vestage of skin and bone and shredding very fine. When this is done, add an equal bulk of mashed potato, work into a stiff batter by adding a lump of butter and sweet milk, and if you want to have them very nice, a beaten egg. Flour your hands and make the mixture into balls or cakes. Drop them into boiling lard or good dripping, and fry to a light brown. Plainer fish-cakes may be made of the cod and potatoes alone, moulded round like biscuit. In any shape the dish is popular.
It gives me great pleasure to recommend the desiccated codfish put up in boxes by the Boston and Philadelphia Salt Fish Company. The fish is already cooked and shred, and the housekeeper is thus saved the only disagreeable part of the process of making this delightful breakfast relish - the boiling and the unsavory odor arising therefrom, as well as the care of soaking and picking out the fish. The balls prepared from the desiccated fish are every whit equal in flavor to those made of the home-cooked, and can be ready at half an hour's notice. The cost is not more - perhaps less, than when one buys the cod in bulk, bones and all.
Boiled Codfish. (Salt.)
Put the fish to soak over night in lukewarm water - as early as eight o'clock in the evening. Change this for more warm water at bed-time and cover closely. Change again in the morning and wash off the salt. Two hours before dinner take out the cod, examine to see that no crystals of salt adhere to the under part, and plunge into very cold water. This makes it firm. Finally, set over the fire with enough lukewarm water to cover it, and boil for half an hour. Drain well; lay it in a hot dish, and pour over it egg sauce prepared in the foregoing receipt (following), only substituting the yolks of two hard boiled eggs, rubbed to a paste with butter, for the beaten raw egg.
This is a useful recipe for country housekeepers who can seldom procure fresh cod. Salt mackerel, prepared in the same way, will well repay the care and time required, so superior is it to the Friday's dish of salt fish, as usually served.
Should the codfish left over be used for fish balls - as it should be - it will be found that the sauce which has soaked into it while hot has greatly improved it.
Have ready a sauce prepared thus:-
To one gill boiling water add as much milk, and when it is scalding hot, stir in - leaving the saucepan on the fire - two tablespoonfuls of butter, a little at a time that it may melt without oiling, a tablespoonful of flour previously wet with cold water, and as this thickens, two beaten eggs. Season with salt and chopped parsley, and when, after one good boil, you withdraw it from the fire, add a dozen capers, or pickled nasturtium seeds, or, if you prefer, a spoonful of vinegar in which celery seeds have been steeped. Put the fish into a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it. Some serve in a butter-boat; but I fancy that the boiling sauce applied to the steaming fish imparts a richness it cannot gain later. Garnish with sprigs of parsley and circles of hard-boiled eggs, laid around the edges of the dish.
Codfish Balls.
Prepare the fish precisely as for boiling whole. Cut in pieces when it has been duly washed and soaked, and boil twenty minutes. Turn off the water, and cover with fresh water from the boiling tea-kettle. Boil twenty minutes more, drain the fish very dry, and spread upon a dish to cool. When perfectly cold, pick to pieces with a fork, removing every vestage of skin and bone and shredding very fine. When this is done, add an equal bulk of mashed potato, work into a stiff batter by adding a lump of butter and sweet milk, and if you want to have them very nice, a beaten egg. Flour your hands and make the mixture into balls or cakes. Drop them into boiling lard or good dripping, and fry to a light brown. Plainer fish-cakes may be made of the cod and potatoes alone, moulded round like biscuit. In any shape the dish is popular.
It gives me great pleasure to recommend the desiccated codfish put up in boxes by the Boston and Philadelphia Salt Fish Company. The fish is already cooked and shred, and the housekeeper is thus saved the only disagreeable part of the process of making this delightful breakfast relish - the boiling and the unsavory odor arising therefrom, as well as the care of soaking and picking out the fish. The balls prepared from the desiccated fish are every whit equal in flavor to those made of the home-cooked, and can be ready at half an hour's notice. The cost is not more - perhaps less, than when one buys the cod in bulk, bones and all.
