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SALMON (a l'Allemande)
Cut the fish into slices two inches thick, leaving a small portion of fish to the head, and the tail four inches long; take away all the blood from the inside, throw some salt over the slices very equally, and half an hour afterwards turn them. Leave them thus for fifteen or twenty minutes, then wash, and drain them upon napkins; butter a fish-strainer, place the slices upon it flat, and cover the greater part of the flesh with slices of lemon cut very thin and the pips taken out; add here and there four large shallots, sliced, whole white pepper, and parsley-roots cut in fillets. Two hours before it is to be served put the fish into the kettle, and place it over a bed of live ashes, put fire also on the top; after thirty or forty minutes uncover the fish, and observe that it should be firm if done sufficiently. Take it out, and let it cool. When serving take away the shallots and a great part of the parsley-roots, dish the salmon on a napkin, commencing with the head and afterwards putting down the slices according to their size, to form the fish of its original shape, and surround it with small groups of parsley; having dished it, pour into the kettle four spoonfuls of hot consomme to collect all the essence of the salmon, which pass through a silk sieve. Let this be well seasoned, and serve it in boats.
SALMON (a l'Amiral), Soyer's recipe.
Truss a small salmon in the form of the letter S, and boil it in the usual way; dish it without a napkin, and have ready the following sauce. Peel four onions, cut them in slices, and put them into a stewpan with six table-spoonfuls of salad-oil; fry them a light brown colour, then pour off the oil, and add two glassfuls of port wine, three cloves, one blade of mace, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, one table-spoonful of salt, two of sugar, twenty of brown sauce, and six of brown gravy; reduce this mixture over a sharp fire for a quarter of an hour, rub it through a tamis, and place it again in a stewpan; boil it again a short time, and finish with one ounce of anchovy butter and two spoonfuls of Harvey Sauce; then place a border of mashed potatoes round the fish, upon which dish a border of quenelles of whiting, and upon every other quenelle stick a prawn, pour the sauce over the fish, and a mazarine sauce over the quenelles; serve very hot. To make the sauce a la Mazarine, take all the spawn from two fine hen lobsters; pound it well in the mortar, and mix it with half a pound of fresh butter; rub it through a hair sieve, place it upon ice till firm, then put it in a stewpan with the yolks of four eggs, a little pepper, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and four table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice, place it over the fire, and proceed as for Dutch sauce, adding the same quantity of melted butter and also two tea-spoonfuls of essence of anchovy. Pass it through a tamis into a clean stewpan to make it hot.
SALMON (a la Danois), Danish mode.
Cut the salmon in slices as directed in the recipe SALMON A L'ALLEMANDE, boil it in water with a little salt, and dish it in its original form, as directed in the recipe named; garnish with potatoes plainly boiled, and serve in sauce-boats melted butter mixed with anchovy butter.
Three related salmon dishes, all built on the same trick: cut the fish into thick collops, cook them gently, then reassemble the fish on the serving dish. The Victorian fish-kettle and ash-bed can be replaced without much loss.
- The hinge: firm, not flakingThe instruction to uncover and check that the flesh is "firm" is the whole method. Thick two-inch collops in a lidded pan over gentle modern heat will generally be done well before the 30-40 minutes the original allows for a slow ash fire, so check early; modern practice takes salmon off at around 125-130F in the centre. Overcooked collops will not hold their shape when reassembled. Note that the original lets the fish cool before dishing.
- The ash-bed translatedA bed of live ashes with fire on the lid is an even, all-round low heat. The book never specifies oven temperatures; a covered roasting pan in a low oven (say around 300F) is a reasonable modern approximation. The buttered "fish-strainer" is the perforated plate or rack that came with a fish kettle, and a folded sheet of buttered foil or a small cooling rack lets you lift the collops out intact.
- Spoonfuls and glassfulsAn unqualified "spoonful" here is probably a tablespoon, the recipe otherwise specifying table- or tea-spoonfuls. A "glassful" of port is a wineglass, usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so the Amiral sauce takes roughly half a cup of port. Twenty spoonfuls of brown sauce is about half a pint.
- Parsley-rootsThese are Hamburg parsley, the parsnip-like root grown for eating rather than the leaf. Parsnip cut in thin fillets is the closest substitute; ordinary parsley stems are not.
- Brown sauce and brown gravyBoth are made elsewhere in the book: brown sauce is espagnole, a roux-thickened brown stock, and brown gravy the unthickened reduction. Reduced veal or beef stock stands in for either. Harvey Sauce was a commercial spiced anchovy-and-soy condiment, long discontinued; Worcestershire is the nearest thing on a modern shelf.
- Tamis and silk sieveA tamis is a drum-shaped cloth sieve that sauces were forced through with a wooden mushroom. A fine chinois with the back of a ladle, or a blitz and a strain, gives the same smoothness.
- The Mazarine sauceThis is a hollandaise mounted on lobster-coral butter, and it fails the same way hollandaise does. Keep it below 160F, off direct heat, and it will hold; let it approach a simmer and the four yolks scramble. Lobster coral is now sold frozen by some fishmongers, but plain lobster butter is easier to source.
- Quenelles of whitingFine-ground whiting forcemeat poached in small ovals. Any lean white fish mousseline works; whiting is thin on the ground in many markets.
- YieldA "small salmon" of the kind called for in the Amiral would serve a table of eight or so as one course, depending on size. The essence in the a l'Allemande recipe is collected with only four spoonfuls of hot consomme, so it amounts to a very small quantity in total -- which is why it goes round in boats rather than over the fish.
The three dishes here sit in the mid-Victorian pattern of naming a garnish after a nation or a rank: a l'Allemande, a l'Amiral, a la Danois, and the labels tell you little about Germany, the navy or Denmark. The a l'Amiral recipe is credited in the text to Alexis Soyer, chef of the Reform Club and the most publicly visible cook in Britain until his death in 1858, and it reads like him: port, anchovy, lobster coral, prawns stuck on alternate quenelles, two sauces on one dish. Cassell's, compiling in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, drew on Soyer, Francatelli and Ude, though how consistently such borrowings were credited varies. What ties the group together is the practice of cutting a large salmon into thick collops and then rebuilding the fish on the platter, head and tail in place, so that a dish carved for convenience arrived at table looking whole. It is a presentation that suits a house with a fish kettle long enough to take the whole animal and hands enough to reassemble it.