Codfish Cakes / Coddies* - OLD LINE PLATE

“While recipes may differ slightly, at least one thing remains the same: the only way to eat a coddie is with yellow mustard!” – Gilbert Sandler, Glimpses of Jewish Baltimore

In the rush to canonize crabcakes, a lot of other regional foods have been pushed to the fray. That’s basically what this blog is about. But few of those foods arouse as much nostalgia and opinion as the lowly coddie.

Baltimoreans in particular associate coddies with memories of grandmother’s cooking, lenten church suppers, or cheap eats at drugstores. Some who remember coddies say they are best left to memory; deservedly dying off.

Of course I disagree, and I always pick one up for a snack when the option is available and my gut has the space for it. At Attman’s, they tempt you while you wait in line. At Faidley’s, a coddie order and a deviled egg is a quick lunch that fits most budgets better than their famous crabcake.

The Practical Cook Book, 1888, Baltimore

While the precise history of coddies is unclear, their basic form has been around for a really long time. Salt cod and potato patties appear in all the old published Maryland cookbooks. Elizabeth Ellicott Lea suggests them as a way to use up leftover cod. Mrs. B.C. Howard calls them “fish balls” and recommends they be served with hasty pudding for breakfast. The 1888 Baltimore advertising cookbook “The Practical Cook Book” includes some chopped onion in their “Cod Fish Balls”, and you can bet that I did too (grated shallot, actually.)

Gallery of Graphic Design

In the early 1900s, codfish cakes served as an early convenience item to finish by frying at home; “instant dinner.” The Gorton-Pew Fishing Company – which dates its commercial fishery back to just after the French and Indian War – made a concerted effort to market a processed convenience food to housewives.

According to a 1920 issue of Marketing Communications magazine, the Gorton-Pew company first considered developing an exciting new product; most importantly something that “would not add to a woman’s work.” When the company instead decided to market a convenient version of an existing favorite – codfish cakes- they conducted surveys with over 10,000 women to gauge for the most popular proportions for the ingredients, preferences in meal planning and even packaging. In an early example of food processing having affecting flavor and nutrition, they chose a potato variety specifically for its ability to remain “snow-white after subjection to the greatest heat of processing.”

Once the machinery was built, manual labor was only needed to remove the eyes of the potatoes. By 1920, The Gorton-Pew codfish cake factory in Gloucester was churning out 30,000 cans of potato cod-fish cakes a day. These commercial codfish cakes were primarily popular in New England, and may be partially responsible for the passions that differentiate Baltimore ‘coddies’ from codfish cakes today.

1949 Advertisement, Baltimore Sun

The most popular Coddies in Baltimore, which perhaps defined the term for Baltimoreans, were Cohen’s. Some stories credit the invention of the coddie as we know it to Fannie Jacobson Cohen, who ran a stall in Belair Market with her husband Louis in the early 1900s. The family eventually moved to distributing the coddies to other vendors and delis all over town.

Cohen used only a small amount of codfish, plus “10 carefully mixed commercial spices,” to make their coddies. These, it seems, are the one true Coddie. The name, however, has been diluted to mean any form of codfish cakes sold in Baltimore, as well as the various recipes that get printed from year-to-year.

I can say for certain that my 1 to 1.5 fish to potato formula was more fishy than my usual coddies from Faidleys. On the other hand, John Shields uses my same ratio in a recipe for “Lexington Market Coddies” in “Coastal Cooking” (2004). An old recipe printed alongside the coddie origin story in “Glimpses of Jewish Baltimore” by Gilbert Sandler is nearly identical to the one I used. At least Mrs. Cohen gets credit for the saltines and the mustard.

Cohen’s ceased production of their famous Coddies in 1971. Since then, the standards for what exactly a coddie is and isn’t have gotten more and more muddled. Some declare that coddies contain no cod at all. At least opinions about coddies remain strong. As long as we have that, the tradition is alive.

Recipe:

1lb salt cod (I got mine at Caribbean Supermarket)
1 to 2 lbs peeled, cooked, mashed potato
2 tb butter
2 tb grated shallot
2 tb milk
pepper to taste
flour
parsley, mustard and saltine crackers for serving

Rinse off fish and set to soak for 24 hours, changing water about every 6 hours. Plase the fish in cold water and bring to a boil for 10 minutes. Repeat. When it has cooled slightly, flake off the meat from the bones. Mix in other ingredients except flour. Dust in flour and fry until golden brown on each side. Shake with parsley just before serving with crackers and mustard.

Recipe adapted from “Queen of the Kitchen,” “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen,” “The Practical Cook Book”, “Tested Maryland Recipes,” “The Maryland Cook Book,” and “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County”