Home › The Principles of Cookery › Salmi, Plain
Salmi, Plain
Take a cold cooked pheasant (or a couple of partridges will do) from which little of the flesh has been cut. Divide it into neat joints free from skin, and lay these side by side in a saucepan. Put into another saucepan the well-bruised bones and trimmings of the bird, a sliced onion, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, six or eight peppercorns, a glassful of sherry, and an inch of lemon-rind. Boil for two minutes, then add a pint of stock and a spoonful of brown thickening. Simmer all gently together till the sauce is pleasantly flavoured, smooth, and of the consistency of cream. Strain it over the pieces of pheasant, and heat slowly. Warm all gently together till the sauce is on the point of boiling, then lift the jointed bird upon a dish, pour the sauce over it, garnish with fried sippets, and serve. Time, one hour or more. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A dish built for the day after a roast game bird, and the technique is sound: the carcass makes the sauce while the jointed meat only warms through. A few of the terms need translating.
- Brown thickening"Brown thickening" here is a cooked brown roux, sometimes kept ready by the spoonful. Use about 1 tbsp butter cooked with 1 tbsp flour until nut-brown.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe bird is already cooked. Bring the sauce and joints only to the point of steaming, which is as far as the original goes ('on the point of boiling'). Hard boiling tends to make reheated game dry and stringy, which is why the original says to heat slowly and warm all gently.
- A glassful of sherryA wineglassful in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz. Dry or medium (amontillado) sherry suits game; cream sherry will make the sauce cloying.
- A pint of stockImperial measure, so 20 fl oz / about 570 ml. Game or brown chicken stock, unsalted, since it reduces. Season only at the end.
- "Boil for two minutes, then add stock"Presumably to cook off the rawness of the sherry and concentrate it before the stock goes in; the recipe does not say why.
- Fried sippetsTriangles or fingers of crustless bread fried in butter or clarified butter until crisp. Cut them before frying and drain them well.
- Sourcing the birdFarmed pheasant is widely available in autumn and winter and is milder than wild. The recipe offers a couple of partridges as a substitute for one pheasant. Check carefully for shot in wild birds when jointing.
- Consistency and yield"Of the consistency of cream" means pouring cream, not whipped: it should coat a spoon thinly. Six or seven Victorian portions is realistically four modern servings from one pheasant, with potatoes or rice.
Salmi (French salmis) is a ragout of game birds, usually part-roasted or already roasted, then finished in a rich sauce made from the pounded carcass and trimmings. In grand nineteenth-century kitchens the sauce was often worked through a sieve or press to extract everything from the bones, and the dish was sometimes finished at table in a chafing dish; this version is labelled "plain" by contrast with those more elaborate treatments. Its place in a domestic dictionary of cookery is often taken to say a good deal about Victorian game economy: shot birds are said to have arrived in quantity during the season, a roast pheasant rarely came off the table stripped, and a salmi turned the remains into something that could be sent up as a course in its own right rather than as visible leftovers.