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Persetorsk
Vestlandet · Western Fjords

Persetorsk

Lightly salted, pressed cod with a firm, silky bite, poached and served with bacon-butter and peas.

1 day cureModerate
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Cultural Context & History

A gentler cousin of lutefisk, pressed cod is salted and weighted for a day to firm the flesh. The result is a clean, dense fillet that western families favour for a special Sunday.

Ingredients

  • 800 g fresh cod fillets, skin on
  • 2 tbsp salt0 kcal · 0 g protein · 0 g fat · 1330 g carbs per 100 g
  • 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • To serve: eggesmør (melted butter with chopped hard-boiled egg), green pea purée and boiled potatoes

Per-100 g values shown for ingredients verified against Nutrition data: USDA FoodData Central (snapshot 2026-09-11). Ingredients not yet verified show no nutrition line.

Recommended Tools

  • Glass or ceramic dishNon-reactive, so the cure never taints the fish.
  • Heavy weightCompresses the fillets to an even, firm flake.
  • Slotted fish sliceLifts the poached cod without breaking the flakes.

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Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. 1

    Mix the salt and sugar and rub the cure evenly over the cod fillets.

  2. 2

    Lay the fillets in a glass dish, cover with cling film, and press under a heavy weight — a cast-iron pan or a couple of scrubbed bricks. Refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours to firm and compress the flesh.

  3. 3

    Rinse away the cure, pat the fish thoroughly dry, and cut into neat portions.

  4. 4

    Bring a pan of lightly salted water to a bare simmer and poach the cod skin-side down for 7 to 8 minutes, until it separates into firm, glossy flakes.

  5. 5

    Serve straight away with warm eggesmør, green pea purée and boiled potatoes.

Chef's Tip

This is a light press, not salt cod — six hours under weight is the limit. Any longer and the flesh turns dense and oversalted rather than silky and firm.

How this page was made

Written by
The Norcook editorial archive. No individual author is named yet — see the editorial and food-safety policy for what that means and what has to happen before a byline appears.
Content last checked
— “checked” records an editorial check, not a qualified review. Where one exists, the recipe-specific review record appears in the food-safety callout.
Regional context
Vestlandet — the hub carries the wider background, the ingredient glossary and its own sources.
Sources
No page-level sources are recorded for this recipe yet. The cultural background above is written as general context, not as a sourced historical claim.

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