Salmon Mold
1 can salmon 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/2 cupful rolled crackers 3 eggs 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce Salt and pepper to taste
Sauce (Tablespoonful Crisco)
1 tablespoonful Crisco 1 tablespoonful flour 1 egg 1 cupful milk Salt and pepper to taste Parsley For the mold. Remove oil, skin and bone from the salmon. Rub salmon smooth, add eggs well beaten, crackers, and seasonings. Turn into a Criscoed mold, and steam for one hour. Turn out and serve with sauce.
For sauce. Blend Crisco and flour in a saucepan over fire, add milk, and stir and boil for five minutes. Add egg well beaten, and seasonings, pour at once over salmon. Garnish with parsley.
Sufficient for one small loaf.
This entry gives quantities only — the method was assumed to be common knowledge, as molded fish loaves were standard weeknight fare in 1915. The proportions still work; what follows fills in the gaps.
- The missing methodFlake the drained salmon, mix it with the melted shortening, cracker crumbs, beaten eggs and seasoning, pack it into a greased mold or loaf pan, and either steam it, covered, for about an hour, or bake it at 350F in a pan of hot water for 45 to 60 minutes until set and firm to the touch. Cool slightly before turning out.
- The can of salmonA 1915 "can" of salmon meant the tall one-pound can. Modern cans run 14.75 oz, which is close enough. Drain it, but keep the liquid — a spoonful or two added back keeps the mold from drying.
- Skin and bonesThe soft vertebrae are edible and were often mashed in rather than picked out. Remove the skin and the dark strip along it if you want a paler, milder loaf; the bones can be crushed with a fork and left in without anyone noticing.
- CriscoCrisco was new when this book was written, and this book exists to sell it. Any neutral solid shortening works, and melted butter gives a better flavor. Melt it before mixing so it distributes rather than sitting in pockets.
- Rolled crackersPlain soda crackers rolled fine with a pin — about half a cup of crumbs, or roughly 12 to 14 crackers. Unsalted cracker meal or dry breadcrumbs substitute directly, but adjust the added salt, since soda crackers bring their own.
- SeasoningA tablespoon of Worcestershire is assertive in a loaf this size, which is the point: canned salmon needs it. Lemon juice, a little grated onion or a pinch of cayenne are all period-appropriate additions.
- ServingServes four to six. It was normally sent to the table with a white sauce, egg sauce or drawn butter, hot as a supper dish or chilled and sliced for a cold plate.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, one of a series of books that existed to put Crisco — introduced in 1911 — into American home kitchens by writing it into every recipe where lard, butter or suet had stood before. The salmon mold itself is older than the shortening: canned Pacific salmon had been cheap and ubiquitous since the Columbia River and Alaska canneries scaled up in the late nineteenth century, and molded, bound loaves of flaked fish were a fixture of the middle-class table, valued because they stretched one can across a family, could be served hot or cold, and turned out of a decorative tin mold looking like more effort than they took.