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SALMON, BOILED (another way)
Put on a fish-kettle with spring water enough to well cover the salmon you are going to cook, or the salmon will neither look nor taste well. Boil the liver in a separate saucepan. When the water boils, put in a handful of salt, take off the scum as soon as it rises, lay the fish in gently, draw it back at once, and keep it below boiling point till done. The time required will depend upon the thickness of the piece. Probable cost, 1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound when plentiful.
A poaching method rather than a boiling one, despite the title. The instruction that matters is the one the Victorians buried in the middle: bring the water up, then draw the pan back and never let it boil again.
- Never actually boil itSalmon held at a rolling boil squeezes out its albumin as white curd and turns the flesh dry and fibrous. Keep the water at 160-175F, barely shivering, for the whole cooking time.
- Timing by thicknessThe original gives none. Reckon roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare simmer, and pull the fish at 125-130F at the thickest point for a moist centre; residual heat carries it a few degrees further.
- The fish kettleA long lidded pan with a perforated lift-out rack. A roasting tin on the hob, or any pan wide enough for the piece to lie flat and be covered by an inch or two of water, does the same job. The rack matters more than the shape: it lets you lift a cooked side out without breaking it.
- "Spring water"Nineteenth-century town water was often unpleasant and could carry off-flavours into a delicately poached fish. Ordinary tap water is fine. What is worth keeping is the volume: enough to cover generously, so the temperature does not crash when the fish goes in.
- A handful of saltTreat this as seasoning the poaching liquid rather than brining. About 1 tablespoon of salt per 2 quarts of water is a reasonable modern reading; the fish will not taste of it, but unsalted water leaches flavour out.
- The liverThe recipe has it boiled separately but does not say what becomes of it; period practice points to serving it alongside the fish or working it into the sauce. It is no longer sold with the fish and no supermarket salmon will arrive with one; the step can simply be dropped.
- SkimmingThe scum rises from the water and the salt once it comes to the boil, and the recipe has you lift it off before the salmon goes in, so it cannot settle back onto the skin and turn it grey.
- Yield and servingAllow 6-8 oz of salmon per person off the bone. Traditional accompaniments in this book's period are a plain butter or lobster sauce, cucumber, and boiled new potatoes.
- The price note1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound is pre-decimal sterling, twelve pence to the shilling. Note that the book quotes this as the price 'when plentiful', i.e. the cheapest the fish got; outside the season it was dearer still.
Cassell's gives several methods for boiled salmon because it was the standard treatment for a whole fish or a large cut in the British kitchen, and because the fish itself was so seasonal: netted salmon from the Tay, Severn and Irish rivers arrived in quantity in late spring and summer, and prices fell accordingly. The care taken over the water fits a period in which the quality of domestic supply varied widely. The separate cooking of the liver suggests a fish bought whole and gutted at home, or delivered from the fishmonger entire. Drawing the kettle back off the heat is sound cookery, and the same instruction recurs in other cookery books of the period.