Cod's Head and Shoulders

Source: Mary Randolph, 1824

History

Mary Randolph's 'To dress a Cod's Head and Shoulders' appears in The Virginia House-Wife, first published in 1824. The recipe directs the cook to remove the gills and blood, salt the head-and-shoulder joint and boil it gently with 'a good handful of salt, with a glass of vinegar,' then strip the skin, brown it before the fire dredged with flour and basted with butter and white bread crumbs, and garnish it 'with a lemon cut in slices, scraped horse-radish, barberries, a few small fish fried and laid around it, or fried oysters,' finishing with lumps of lobster from the accompanying sauce. Far from a distinctly American invention, Randolph's text reproduces an established English recipe almost word for word: it matches Elizabeth Raffald's cod's-head recipe in The Experienced English Housekeeper — including the barberry, oyster and lobster garnish — with only trivial changes such as 'vinegar' for Raffald's 'alegar' (ale vinegar). This is consistent with the book as a whole, whose recipes were often 'little more than slightly-tweaked versions of well-established English dishes'. The barberries, oysters and lobster were thus part of the inherited English dish, not luxuries introduced in America. The record does not document any social-status meaning specific to this dish.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Take out the gills and the blood from the bone.
  2. Wash the head very clean, rub over it a little salt, then lay it on your fish plate.
  3. Throw in the water a good handful of salt, with a glass of vinegar, then put in the fish, and let it boil gently half an hour; if it is a large one, three quarters.
  4. Take it up very carefully and strip the skin nicely off.
  5. Set it before a brisk fire, dredge it all over with flour, and baste it well with butter.
  6. When the froth begins to rise, throw over it some very fine white bread crumbs; you must keep basting it all the time to make it froth well.
  7. When it is a fine light brown, dish it up, and garnish it with a lemon cut in slices, scraped horse-radish, barberries, a few small fish fried and laid around it, or fried oysters.
  8. Cut the roe and liver in slices, and lay over it a little of the lobster out of the sauce in lumps, and then serve it up.

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