[Sca-cooks] Salt fish recipes?-- I.E. SALTED (preserved) fish

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 13:55 -0500, jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:

> I'm looking specifically for recipes for fish that has been preserved by
> salting, yes.

IIRC, there are a great number of recipes for fresh fish in The
Enseignements (which should be available on Thomas Gloning's site - in
French and an English translation by someone on this list, I forget
who), a significant number of which end with a clause to the effect,
"and if it is salted, serve it with mustard..." The standard method for
dried fish generally involves beating it to loosen fibers and facilitate
soaking, then the soaking, then some form of poaching or other gentle
simmering. You can't boil it or the connective tissue that holds i9t
together will disintegrate before the actual muscle fibers fully
reconstitute and tenderize.

I STR (I'd check on this; I'm not within reach of the bookshelves just
now) Taillevent recommending putting some smaller salt fish into a
pasty, and then serving with a sauce, so basically it's cooked with
moist heat in a pastry cover, then either served in that cover or
removed and sauced like any other poached fish. 

It sounds like the lutefisk-with-mustard combination is not without
period precedent. 

>  I found one period recipe in the Florilegium...
> 
> Any other *period* recipes, for dried, salted fish, that y'all are aware of?
> 
> This is what I've found in the Florilegium file that's a period recipe,
> posted by Master A:
> 
> >Here's a period German recipe for what seems pretty clearly to be
> >lutefisk, courtesy of Valoise Armstrong's translation of Das Kochbuch
> >von Sabina Welserin, 1553 C.E. :
> 
> > 33 To prepare dried cod, from the gracious Lord of Lindau, who was
> Bishop in Constance
> > First take river water and ashes and add caustic lime, which should be
> rather strong, and soak the dried cod therein. Allow it to soak for a
> day and a night, afterwards drain it off and pour on it again the
> previously described caustic lime solution. Let it soak again for a day
> and a night, put it afterwards in a pot and wash it off two or three
> times in water, so that the fish no longer tastes like lye. Put it then
> in a pot and put water therein and let it slowly simmer so that it does
> not boil over. Allow it to only simmer slowly, otherwise it becomes
> hard. Let it cook approximately one hour, after which, dress and salt it
> and pour salted butter over it and serve it. Also put good mustard on
> the outside in about three places. One must also beat dried cod well
> before it is soaked.>

Please note that this is for something probably more like stockfish than
bacalhau...

Adamantius