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SALMON (a la Tartare)
Take two slices of salmon out of the middle of a moderate-sized fish, each slice of the thickness of three-quarters of an inch. Wash the salmon lightly in salted water, and dry it thoroughly. Brush it all over with the best salad-oil, season with salt and pepper, and broil it on a gridiron over a gentle fire; taking care to turn and baste it frequently. When it is done enough, which it will be when the flesh leaves the bone on a slight pressure, place it on a cold dish, and pour round it a sauce prepared as follows. Put the yolk of an egg, well freed from white, into a bowl; remove the speck, add a pinch of salt, and very gradually--first by drops and afterwards by tea-spoonfuls--about four table-spoonfuls of good salad-oil. Beat the sauce well between every addition. Afterwards stir in, very gradually, three tea-spoonfuls of good vinegar, a tea-spoonful of chilli vinegar, and a tea-spoonful of tarragon vinegar, and add a table-spoonful of dry mustard, a tea-spoonful of chopped spring onions, and a tea-spoonful of chopped chervil. If liked, three or four gherkins, finely minced, or a tea-spoonful of anchovy, may be added to the sauce, which ought to be of the consistency of thick cream. Garnish the salmon with capers, gherkins, or olives. If more convenient, the salmon can be fried and served in the same way; it is, however, best when broiled. To prepare it for frying, mix a table-spoonful of finely-grated bread-crumbs with the tenth part of a nutmeg, grated, a small pinch of pepper and a tea-spoonful of shredded parsley. Brush the fish with clarified butter, and sprinkle the seasoned crumbs over it. Fry in plenty of hot fat till done enough. Drain it well, and serve with cold lobster, shrimp, or caper sauce. Time to broil the fish, twenty minutes; to fry it, ten minutes. Probable cost, salmon, 1s. per pound when in full season. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A grilled salmon steak with a hand-made mustard mayonnaise. Two things in the original need rethinking: the cooking time and the quantity of dry mustard.
- Cut and thicknessTwo slices from the middle of a "moderate-sized" fish means two crosscut steaks about three-quarters of an inch thick, each big enough to divide among two or three people. Centre-cut steaks or thick loin fillets both work; skin-on holds together better on bars.
- Twenty minutes is far too longA three-quarter-inch salmon steak over direct heat is done in 8 to 10 minutes total, turned once or twice. The book's twenty minutes assumes a gentle coal fire and produces dry, chalky fish on a modern grill. Pull it at 120-125F at the thickest point for moist flesh; the old test of the flesh parting from the bone means it is already well past that.
- Gridiron over a gentle fireA gridiron is a grate set over embers, not flames. The nearest equivalents are a charcoal grill after the coals have greyed over, a ridged cast-iron grill pan on medium, or an oven broiler with the shelf lowered a notch. Oil the bars as well as the fish.
- Salad-oilIn Victorian English this means olive oil, and "best salad-oil" means the good bottle. For the mayonnaise a mild olive or a neutral oil is easier to control; a strong extra-virgin can turn bitter when beaten hard.
- Cut the mustard backA tablespoon of dry mustard powder into a sauce built on one yolk and four tablespoons of oil will swamp it and turn harsh. Start with a level teaspoon, taste, and build. The vinegars are similarly assertive: three teaspoons of plain vinegar (the book specifies only "good vinegar") plus a teaspoon each of chilli and tarragon vinegar is already sharp.
- Chilli and tarragon vinegarBoth were cupboard staples made by steeping pods or fresh tarragon in wine vinegar for a week or two. Tarragon vinegar is still sold; for chilli vinegar, a wine vinegar with a dried chilli left in it for a few days does the same job, or use a few drops of hot sauce and a little more plain vinegar.
- The raw yolkThe sauce is an uncooked mayonnaise. "Remove the speck" means picking out the germinal spot and any thread of white. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised egg yolk. Add the oil in drops until the emulsion takes, then in teaspoonfuls, beating between each; if it splits, start with a fresh yolk and beat the broken sauce into it.
- Serving coldThe fish goes onto a cold dish and the sauce, an uncooked mayonnaise, is poured round it, which points to a cool or room-temperature dish rather than a hot one, though the book does not say so outright. Grill it ahead, let it come down from the heat, and dress it shortly before serving.
- The fried versionA tablespoon of crumbs is barely a dusting for two steaks; scale up to about half a cup. Ten minutes in deep fat is again generous for this thickness, so watch the colour and the interior rather than the clock.
- YieldFive or six servings as written, which tells you the steaks are large. "1s. per pound when in full season" reflects a period when Scottish and Irish salmon were seasonal and netted, and cheapest at the height of the season.
À la tartare, in nineteenth-century kitchen French, signals not a raw preparation but a mustard-and-herb-sharpened mayonnaise served with something grilled or crumbed and fried — the name is usually traced, though this is tradition rather than documented derivation, to a French fondness for invoking Tartars as shorthand for anything fierce or piquant, rather than to any Central Asian dish. Cassell's places the recipe among its salmon entries at a period when ice, faster rail freight from Scotland and Ireland, and heavy netting on the great salmon rivers were bringing fresh steaks within reach of middle-class tables at a shilling or so a pound in season. The sauce also shows the Victorian store cupboard at work, with its home-steeped chilli and tarragon vinegars, its bottled anchovy and its mustard flour doing the work that a modern cook would ask of a single jar. Serving the fish cold with a cold sauce would have suited a dish cooked in the morning and eaten at a later, warmer hour.