Perhaps, however, for a luncheon dish you would rather have the codfish served with brown butter. In which case you flake and freshen it as before, and cook in plenty of water. Take it up on a hot dish and pour over it a sauce made of butter, in which you have fried minced onion and a handful of chopped parsley till they are brown. And you can vary this sauce infinitely: add a bay leaf or two, or a few capers, or some chopped sweet red peppers, and get a new flavor with each addition.
The subject of codfish balls I won’t take up here. I fear I might make it too exhaustive. And, besides, every housekeeper seems to have a chosen way for preparing them.
Fried Cods’ Tongues
I wish as much could be said about that too-little-appreciated genuine delicacy—fresh cods’ tongues. They are delicious when boiled till tender, and then served with brown butter, as suggested above for codfish. And they are just as good, and some think even better, if they are dipped in milk, then rolled one by one in flour, and fried in plenty of butter for about ten minutes. You can simply pour the butter on them when serving, with a little chopped parsley scattered over all, or you can put into the frying-pan, after taking the tongues out, a gill or two of tomato sauce, and serve this separately in a sauceboat, serving each tongue on a slice of toast. Usually it will be found necessary to soak the salted tongues for twenty-four hours or more in water, changing it once or twice, as seems necessary.
To be sure there’s considerable trouble and no small amount of care involved in having these edibles, or any others, for that matter, quite as one would like, but some old wiseacre has said that life’s cares are its comforts, and if one only has a firm belief, rooted and grounded in past experience, in this bit of philosophy it’s just as easy to apply it to cooking as to painting.
Broiled Smoked Salmon
And a little of this care used in the broiling of smoked salmon redeems it from the charred and uninviting dish it too often makes. It is best to cut the salmon into small strips, wrap each strip in a piece of buttered paper, and then broil over a clear fire. When done remove the paper, and serve the fish on a piping hot dish, at once. And if you want a sauce for it make one by cooking a minced onion in a gill of vinegar and twice as much water, adding, as the onion shows signs of tenderness, two ounces of fresh butter, four finely chopped hard-boiled egg yolks, and a little chopped parsley.
Boiled Salt Mackerel, with Horse-radish Sauce
Of course you know how to cook salt mackerel—you could sue me for libel if I said aught to the contrary. But do you, I wonder, ever try preparing it in my favorite way? This is the manner of it: Soak the mackerel for twelve hours, changing the water several times. Then boil it in an abundance of water, in which there is a bay leaf, two or three onions, some parsley and the juice of a lemon. The fish should cook very slowly, and not be allowed to come to pieces. When they are done, serve them on a folded napkin, with a sauce made by reducing a pint of cream to one-half, adding to it an ounce of butter, and thickening it with two egg yolks. Then add to it half its quantity of grated horse-radish, heating it again, without boiling. In most cases it is necessary to add salt to this sauce, but I prescribe no quantity. I only advise being skittish about the amount when it is to be used for a salt fish. If you are to have smoked mackerel, broil instead of boiling it and serve with it the cream horse-radish sauce.
Smoked Herring Fried