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SALMON (a l'Indienne)
Prepare the cutlets as for SALMON A LA MILANAISE. Dip them into clarified butter, and sprinkle over them a savoury mixture, made with a table-spoonful of baked flour, a tea-spoonful of curry-powder, and a pinch of salt. Fry in plenty of hot fat till the flesh will leave the bone easily, then drain the cutlets on blotting-paper, and serve on a hot dish, with sauce prepared as follows poured over and around them. Mince four shallots very finely, sprinkle a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar over them, and simmer till tender with a table-spoonful of good vinegar. Pour over them a quarter of a pint of stock, let the sauce boil, add a tea-spoonful of curry-paste, a table-spoonful of pickle vinegar, and three table-spoonfuls of mixed Indian pickles cut into dice. Simmer for a few minutes, and serve. Time to broil the cutlets, fifteen to twenty minutes, according to thickness. Probable cost, salmon, when plentiful, 1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound.
A Victorian curry-dusted salmon steak with a sharp shallot-and-pickle sauce. Two things need attention: the cooking time, and the fact that the method says fry while the timing note says broil.
- The timing is the hingeFifteen to twenty minutes will leave a salmon steak dry and chalky right through. A cutlet an inch thick is done at around 125-130F at the centre, which in hot fat takes roughly 3-4 minutes a side. The book's test, that the flesh leaves the bone easily, is a sign of overcooking by current standards.
- Fry or broilThe instructions say fry in plenty of hot fat; the time note says broil. Either works with the crust of baked flour and curry powder, but choose one. Shallow-frying in a heavy pan gives the better crust on a buttered, floured surface.
- CutletsA salmon cutlet here is a cross-cut steak on the bone, cut from a whole fish. The book gives no thickness, only 'according to thickness'. Ask for centre-cut steaks rather than fillet portions; the bone and the ring of skin hold the shape in the pan.
- Baked flourPlain flour spread on a tray and dried in a low oven until faintly coloured, the period way of killing raw flour taste in thickenings and coatings. Ordinary plain flour toasted in a dry pan for a few minutes gives the same effect.
- Quarter of a pintImperial measure, so 5 fl oz, a little over half a US cup of stock. Fish or light chicken stock both suit.
- Curry-paste and pickle vinegarCurry paste in this period generally meant a commercial jarred blend of spice and oil, sometimes with tamarind or vinegar, closer to a mild Madras paste than to a fresh Thai one. Pickle vinegar most likely means the liquid from a jar of pickles, so no separate purchase is needed.
- Mixed Indian picklesProbably the Anglo-Indian bottled pickle of mango, lime, chilli and vegetables sold across Victorian Britain, though the make-up varied by maker. Modern jarred mixed pickle is the nearest equivalent and is often hotter and saltier, so start with less than three tablespoons and taste.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper. Blotting paper is unsized, which is what makes it absorbent.
- YieldThe sauce quantities would suit roughly four cutlets, though the recipe gives no number. Serve with rice or plain boiled potatoes.
The à l'Indienne label in a book like Cassell's rarely signals an Indian dish so much as a French kitchen technique wearing curry powder, and this recipe is a clear case: the shallots sweated with sugar and vinegar, the stock, the dice of garnish are all standard European sauce-making, with bought curry paste and bottled mixed pickle supplying the accent. That bottled pickle is the real historical detail. By the later nineteenth century Anglo-Indian pickles, chutneys and curry powders were mass-produced grocery staples in Britain, the domestic residue of a century of empire, and a cook could put an 'Indian' dish on the table without knowing a single spice by name. The costing note, a shilling to one and fourpence a pound for salmon when plentiful, is a reminder that this was seasonal wild fish, cheap in the summer run and dear the rest of the year, the reverse of the year-round farmed salmon most readers will buy.