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Lax
Lax is a preparation of Norwegian salmon, cut in small squares and preserved in oil. It is generally used as a hors d'oeuvre or a savoury. It can be procured in tins, and may be served in the same way as sardines. Small slices may be laid on hot buttered toast, dusted with cayenne, and made hot in the oven for two minutes. Stoned olives may accompany this way of serving.
This is half dictionary entry, half savoury: the substance of it is the last two sentences, where slices of preserved salmon go onto buttered toast under heat. The product it names is no longer sold in the form Cassell's assumed, so the substitution matters more than the method.
- What lax actually wasSalmon cut small and packed in oil, sold in tins like sardines. The nearest current equivalents are tinned salmon in oil, or a good hot-smoked salmon flaked into pieces; cold-smoked slices will work but go flabby and lose their texture under heat.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; ranges were rarely calibrated and cooks judged heat by hand and eye. The two-minute timing implies a hot oven, and something in the region of 425-450F suits the purpose, which is to warm the fish and crisp the toast rather than cook anything through.
- Do not overheatThis is the hinge. Oil-packed salmon is already cooked; more than a couple of minutes and the flesh tightens, the oil separates and the toast turns greasy. Watch it rather than timing it.
- CayenneCayenne is the whole seasoning here alongside the salt in the fish, and it appears on savoury after savoury in books of this period. A light dusting is enough.
- The toastButter it while hot so the butter soaks in before the fish goes on. Savouries were generally served as one or two bites rather than a full slice of toast per person.
- Serving as an hors d'oeuvreThe recipe allows the fish to be served cold in the sardine manner, straight from the tin, with no heat involved at all.
- YieldNo quantity is given. As a rough guide a small tin will dress something like six to eight fingers of toast. The stoned olives are offered as an accompaniment, not a side dish.
Lax is simply the Scandinavian and North German word for salmon -- Norwegian laks, Swedish lax -- and it appears in British grocery lists as the name of imported Norwegian salmon, sitting on the shelf beside sardines and anchovies. Its appearance in Cassell's reflects two things about the period: the enormous expansion of tinned fish imports, which put preserved salmon within reach of households that would never see a fresh Tay or Spey fish, and the fixed place of the savoury in the English dinner, a small hot salty mouthful served after the sweet and before dessert, almost always on toast and almost always sharpened with cayenne. The same root survives in gravlax, from gravad lax, literally buried salmon, though that is a cured rather than a tinned preparation and reached British tables much later.