Salmon Salad
Set a can of salmon in a kettle of boiling water, let boil twenty minutes, take out of the can and put in a deep dish, pour off the juice or oil, put a few cloves in and around it, sprinkle salt and pepper over, cover with cold vinegar, and let it stand a day, take it from the vinegar and lay it on a platter. Prepare a dressing as follows: Beat the yolks of two raw eggs with the yolks of two eggs boiled hard and mashed fine as possible; add gradually a tablespoon mustard, three of melted butter, or the best of salad-oil, a little salt and pepper (either black or cayenne), and vinegar to taste. Beat the mixture a long time (some persons like the addition of lemon juice and a little brown sugar); cover the salmon thickly with a part of the dressing, tear up very small the crisp inside leaves of lettuce, put in the remainder of the mixture, and pour over with two or three larger pieces placed around the salmon, and serve.
A two-day dish from the era when canned salmon was a novelty worth dressing up. The pickling step is the interesting part; the dressing is a hand-beaten mayonnaise built on both raw and hard-cooked yolks.
- Skip the boiling canHeating the can probably loosened the fish and firmed it into a single block for slicing. Modern canned salmon is fully cooked and shelf-stable; heating a sealed can in water risks a burst seam or a scorched liner, so simply open it and lift the fish out whole.
- The pickling day belongs in the refrigerator"Let it stand a day" meant a cold larder or cellar. Fish in vinegar at room temperature for 24 hours is not something to attempt; cover and hold it at refrigerator temperature, and use it within two days.
- Cloves are assertive"A few cloves" against one can of salmon is a lot by current taste. Three or four whole cloves is plenty, and they should be removed before dressing the fish.
- Raw yolks in the dressingThe two raw yolks are never cooked. Use pasteurized eggs, or pasteurized yolks in carton form, and keep the finished dressing cold; it will not hold at room temperature the way a bottled mayonnaise does.
- "Beat the mixture a long time"This is the hinge. The melted butter or oil must go in slowly while beating, or the emulsion will break. A whisk and a few minutes will do what the original expected from steady arm work; add the vinegar or lemon juice only after the fat is fully incorporated.
- Butter versus oilMelted butter sets firm when chilled and gives a stiff, almost pate-like coating; salad oil gives a pourable dressing closer to modern mayonnaise. The recipe offers either, but they are not interchangeable in texture.
- A tablespoon of mustardThis most likely means dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard. A tablespoon is a full, sharp measure; start with two teaspoons if you are uncertain.
- YieldA standard can of salmon runs 14-15 oz and will serve four as a first course or light lunch, with the lettuce tossed through the remaining dressing as the base.
Canned salmon, produced on the Pacific coast from the mid-1860s onward (Sacramento in 1864, the Columbia River from 1866), reached inland American kitchens as one of the first reliable year-round fish, which is why a book like Buckeye Cookery (published in Marysville, Ohio, in editions dated 1876 and 1877 depending on the printing) can call for it casually in a state with no salmon of its own. The vinegar-and-clove steeping is older than the can: it is the same logic as pickled or soused fish, a preservation technique repurposed here as flavoring, since the salmon needed no preserving. The dressing, combining raw yolks with mashed hard-cooked ones, follows one common American "salad dressing" style of the period, more stable and more forgiving than a straight mayonnaise, and the optional lemon juice and brown sugar show a taste for sweet-sour dressings that would later harden into bottled commercial versions.