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Salmon, Baked
Cut the fish into slices three-quarters of an inch thick. Wash these lightly in salted water, and dry them in a cloth. Take three-quarters of a pint of good melted butter, mix with it a pinch of cayenne, a table-spoonful of ketchup, a glassful of port, and one boned anchovy. Stir the sauce over the fire till the anchovy is dissolved, then strain it over the salmon. Cover the dish, and put it into a moderately-heated oven. When done enough, serve in a hot dish, with the sauce poured round the salmon. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost of the salmon, from 1s. per pound.
A Victorian baked salmon in a fortified butter sauce. Two things in the text will mislead a modern cook: "melted butter" is not melted butter, and the baking time belongs to a whole fish, not to inch-thick steaks.
- The timing is the hingeThree-quarters of an hour will reduce three-quarter-inch salmon steaks to dry flakes. Cut that way, in a covered dish at a moderate oven, they are done in 15 to 20 minutes, when the centre is just set; standard modern guidance for fish is an internal 145F. The longer time in the original suits a thick centre cut or a whole piece.
- "Melted butter" means butter sauceIn English cookery books of this period melted butter is a thickened sauce: a roux of about 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour cooked with half a pint of water or fish stock, finished with more butter. Plain liquid butter will split and leave the fish greasy.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, near enough two cups less a couple of tablespoons. That is a generous quantity of sauce for two to three pounds of fish, which is the point -- it is poured round at the table.
- KetchupIn Victorian Britain an unqualified "ketchup" in a cookery book most often means mushroom or walnut ketchup: thin, dark, salty, closer to a mild Worcestershire than to tomato sauce. Tomato ketchup will sweeten the sauce badly. Mushroom ketchup is still sold, and a teaspoon of Worcestershire plus a little soy is the nearest common substitute.
- A glassful of portA wineglass in Victorian measure is about 2 fl oz. Use a tawny or ruby port, not a vintage one -- the sauce is strained and seasoned, and the wine is there for body and colour.
- The boned anchovyA salt-packed anchovy, rinsed and filleted off its backbone; oil-packed fillets work and need no boning. Stir over low heat until it breaks down completely, roughly five minutes. Straining afterwards catches any fibres, so the anchovy reads as depth rather than as fish.
- Moderately-heated ovenAbout 350F; period "moderate" is usually rendered somewhere in the 350-375F range. Covering the dish keeps the sauce from reducing to a glaze while the fish sets.
- Salt in the wash, and afterThe anchovy, the ketchup and the butter sauce all carry salt. Taste the strained sauce before it goes over the fish rather than seasoning at the end.
- YieldAssume six ounces of salmon per person. Two pounds of fish and this quantity of sauce will serve four to five as a main course.
Cassell's priced salmon at a shilling a pound and upward, which marked it as a respectable but no longer exceptional fish -- the railways and ice had brought Scottish and Irish salmon to London and the provincial towns in quantity, and it had begun its slide from luxury to something more ordinary. The sauce is pure high-Victorian English: melted butter as the base for almost everything, sharpened with anchovy, darkened with a bottled ketchup, enriched with port. That trio of anchovy, ketchup and fortified wine turns up again and again in the fish and meat sauces of the period, and it descends from the eighteenth-century store-cupboard habit of keeping strong bottled flavourings -- mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, essence of anchovy -- to lift plain roasted and baked food. It is worth noting how little the recipe says about the salmon itself: the fish is assumed to be good, and the cook's work is all in the sauce.