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Halibut Salad
Chop very fine one pound of cooked halibut, season with a few drops of onion juice, two tea-spoonfuls of lemon juice, half a tea-spoonful of paprika, one and a half tea-spoonfuls of salt, and a few grains of cayenne; add one-third of a cup of thick cream, which has been beaten until stiff, and the whites of three well-beaten eggs. Put into buttered timbale moulds, and cook in the oven until firm. When quite cold remove from the moulds, arrange on salad dish, garnish with mayonnaise around and on top of fish, and shrimps at the base.
A cold fish timbale dressed as a salad — closer to a mousseline than to anything tossed in a bowl. The technique is straightforward, but the original assumes you know how such moulds are baked.
- Bake in a water bathThe instruction "cook in the oven until firm" omits the bain-marie usual for moulded custards of this kind. Stand the filled moulds in a roasting tin of hot water reaching halfway up their sides and bake in a moderate oven, around 325F as a modern equivalent; direct dry heat risks curdling the cream and weeping liquid.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided dariole moulds of about 4 fl oz. Ramekins or a muffin tin work; butter them well and line the bases with a disc of parchment, since a set fish custard grips. One pound of fish plus cream and whites fills six to eight.
- TimingNo time is given. At 325F in a water bath, small moulds set in roughly 20-25 minutes — the centre should be just firm to a light press and a skewer come out clean. Overbaking makes them spongy and dry.
- Onion juiceA standard nineteenth-century seasoning: grate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid that collects, or press grated onion in a sieve. It gives the flavour without pieces that would spoil a smooth timbale.
- Measure the cream before whippingOne-third of a cup means one-third of a cup of liquid cream, then beaten stiff. Use heavy or double cream; much under about 30 percent fat will not whip stiff.
- FoldingChop the halibut very fine, or pulse it briefly, then fold in the cream and the beaten whites in two additions. The stiff cream and the whites together are what lighten the mixture, and stirring them out gives a dense, rubbery result.
- PaprikaHalf a teaspoon in a pound of fish is for colour and mild warmth — sweet Hungarian or Spanish paprika, not hot or smoked, which would overwhelm halibut.
- Serving and mayonnaiseChill the moulds thoroughly, several hours or overnight, before turning out; warm timbales collapse. If you make mayonnaise from scratch for the garnish, note that it is uncooked raw yolk, which matters for anyone vulnerable.
Timbales of pounded fish, veal or game, bound with cream and egg white and unmoulded cold, were a fixture of ambitious late-Victorian and Edwardian entertaining — the technique descends from the French *mousseline* forcemeats codified in professional kitchens of the nineteenth century and adapted for the domestic cook. Calling this a salad rather than an entrée reflects the period's loose use of the word: a cold, mayonnaise-dressed composition arranged on a dish counted as salad whether or not a leaf was involved. The recipe also shows how quickly paprika had spread beyond Hungary into English and American cookery by the turn of the century, where it was valued as much for the pink blush it gave pale fish and cream as for its flavour. Halibut was a usual choice for such dishes because its firm white flesh chops cleanly and holds its shape.