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SALMON, BOILED, PLAIN (M. Soyer's way)
"I prefer always dressing this fish in slices from an inch to two inches in thickness, boiling it in plenty of salt and water about twenty minutes; the whole fish may be boiled, or the head and shoulders of a large fish, but they require longer boiling. Salmon cats firmer by not being put into the water until boiling. Dress the fish upon a napkin, and serve with lobster sauce, shrimp sauce, or plain melted butter in a boat with fresh sprigs of parsley boiled a few minutes in it. A salmon weighing about ten pounds will require an hour's gentle boiling; a head and shoulders weighing six pounds half an hour."
Soyer's method is sound in principle — salted water at a full boil, fish added only once it is boiling, sauce in a separate boat — but his timings belong to an era of much larger wild fish and a much firmer idea of what cooked salmon should be.
- The timing is the thing to changeAn inch-thick salmon steak is done in 6 to 8 minutes in barely simmering water; two inches wants perhaps 10 to 12. Twenty minutes will give a much drier, flakier, firmer result than most modern palates expect, though it is closer to what the recipe as written aims at.
- "Gentle boiling" means a bare simmerWater at a rolling boil batters the flesh apart and squeezes out albumin as white curd. Bring the pan to the boil, slide in the fish, then drop the heat so the surface only shivers.
- Whole-fish timesAn hour for a ten-pound salmon and half an hour for a six-pound head and shoulders suggest a fish cooked right through at the bone. Working to internal temperature is more reliable: many modern cooks pull at 120-125F at the thickest part for moist flesh, while 140-145F gives the firm, fully cooked texture the original intends.
- Salt and waterThe recipe gives no quantity; "plenty of salt" for boiled fish is usually taken as a generously salted water, on the order of 2 tablespoons per quart, rather than lightly salted water. A court-bouillon with a bay leaf and a few peppercorns is a reasonable modern substitute.
- Farmed salmon behaves differentlyMost salmon sold now is farmed, fattier and softer than the wild river fish (Tay and other Scottish and Irish rivers) that supplied Soyer's London kitchens. It cooks faster and falls apart more readily, so handle it with a wide slotted spatula and err short on time.
- "Dress the fish upon a napkin"A folded linen napkin on the serving dish, which absorbs the water draining from the fish so the sauce is not thinned. A clean tea towel or a folded cloth serves the same purpose.
- The saucesLobster and shrimp sauces of the period are built on melted butter (butter thickened with a little flour and water or milk) with chopped shellfish stirred through -- not modern cream reductions. The parsley version is the simplest: simmer sprigs a few minutes in the melted butter and send it to table in a boat.
- YieldAllow 6 to 8 oz of fish per person off the bone. A single 1-inch steak of about 8 oz is one generous serving; a six-pound head and shoulders will feed eight to ten.
The "M. Soyer" quoted here is Alexis Soyer (1810 u20131858), the French-born chef of the Reform Club in London, and by mid-century the most famous cook in Britain u2014 author of The Gastronomic Regenerator and A Shilling Cookery for the People, inventor of a much-publicised portable stove, and the man who went to Crimea to reorganise the army's hospital kitchens. Here his method is given in his own words, which is why this entry reads as a first-person aside in the middle of a reference work. His preference for thick cutlets over the whole fish reflects the reality of Victorian salmon: netted wild fish of ten pounds and up, sold by the piece, with the head and shoulders treated as the choicest cut. The insistence on plunging the fish into already-boiling water was standard doctrine of the period, held to seal the flesh and keep it firm u2014 a belief about searing that later cooking science has largely dismantled, though the practice does at least shorten the time the fish spends in the water.