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Irish Salmon Pickle
Trim any part of salmon left from dinner, or boil a nice handsome piece. Lay it in a deep dish, and, when cold, pour over it the following pickle, also cold. If closely covered and well basted with the pickle the salmon will keep many days. Boil together in half a pint of vinegar, a gill of water, a gill of white wine, some sliced horse-radish, two blades of mace, two bay-leaves, whole pepper, allspice, and a little salt. Let it get cold, and pour it over the fish. Time, ten minutes to boil.
A cold souse for cooked salmon, of the sort every Victorian kitchen used to stretch a large fish over several days. The measurements are imperial and the keeping advice belongs to a world of cold larders.
- The gill and the half-pintAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz (about 150 ml); the half-pint of vinegar is 10 fl oz (about 300 ml). Total liquid is therefore roughly 600 ml, enough to cover a pound or two of salmon in a narrow dish.
- Both elements must be coldThis is the hinge. Warm pickle poured over cooked salmon will continue to cook the surface and turn it dry and chalky, and it puts the fish through the warm zone twice. Boil the spiced liquor, cool it completely, then pour.
- Ten minutes, and no longerThe ten-minute boil is for the pickle alone, to draw out the horseradish and spice. Boiling it longer drives off vinegar and concentrates the salt.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg; a blade is one whole piece. If you have only ground, use about a quarter teaspoon for the two blades and strain the pickle before pouring.
- Horse-radishFresh root, peeled and sliced into coins — not the creamed horseradish sauce sold in jars, which is usually blended with dairy and sugar and will cloud the liquor. Two or three inches of root is ample.
- Poaching the fishThe recipe says to boil the piece; a gentler poach in barely trembling salted water works better. Cook until it flakes at the thickest point and is opaque throughout, then let it go cold in its own liquor before draining.
- "Will keep many days"It will not, on a modern counter. The pickle is vinegar diluted by half with water and wine, so the acidity is too low to preserve cooked fish at room temperature. Refrigerate it, keep the salmon submerged, and eat within three days.
- Serving and yieldA pound of pickled salmon serves four as a first course or lunch dish. Lift it out, drain briefly, and serve with brown bread, butter and a few of the pickled horseradish slices.
Soused or pickled salmon was standard household economy wherever the fish ran in quantity, and the Irish and Scottish rivers supplied both the British table and a substantial export trade in salted and pickled fish through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The method here — poach, cool, drown in spiced vinegar — is close to that used commercially for barrelled salmon, scaled down to a dinner leftover; the name attached to it in English cookery books generally signals the source of the fish rather than a distinctly Irish technique. Mace, bay and allspice were common souse spices, cheap and shelf-stable, and horseradish was widely believed at the time to act as a preservative as well as a flavouring.