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Salmon Bouchees
Fry some small rounds of bread in butter until brown; then put them on a hot dish, and pile some scraped smoked salmon over. Sprinkle with cayenne, add a little butter, then put the rounds in the oven just long enough to get thoroughly hot through.
A savoury of the late Victorian and Edwardian type: a few croutes, some smoked salmon, and a hot oven for barely a minute. The whole thing lives or dies on not overheating the fish.
- Oven and timingThe recipe gives no temperature and no time, only "just long enough to get thoroughly hot through". Read that as warm to the lip rather than cooked: cold-smoked salmon goes opaque, dry and grainy if it is actually heated through.
- "Scraped" salmonThis means shaving the flesh off the skin side with the back of a knife or a spoon so it comes away in soft shreds rather than slices. Modern pre-sliced smoked salmon can be chopped or shredded to the same effect.
- Which salmonThe scraping points to cold-smoked salmon, the silky kind. Hot-smoked or kiln-roasted salmon flakes rather than scrapes and is drier, so it will not hold together in a pile.
- The croutesCut rounds about 1 1/2 inches across from a close-crumbed white loaf, ideally a day old, and fry in clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix so the milk solids do not burn. Drain well; a greasy base ruins a bouchee.
- CayenneVictorian savouries were deliberately sharp, but smoked salmon is already salty. A light dusting is enough, and no extra salt is wanted.
- QuantityNo yield is given. Reckon on about 4 oz of salmon and a dozen small rounds to serve four to six as a savoury or with drinks.
- ServingThese must go to the table at once. Made ahead, the croute softens under the butter and the fish stiffens as it cools.
A bouchee is literally a mouthful, and the word covered any small hot morsel served on pastry or fried bread, not only the puff-pastry cases the term suggests today. Preparations like this belonged to the savoury course, the small, salty, peppery dish that closed an English dinner after the sweets, a course that was already a marker of specifically British table habits. Its ingredients also reflect a change in supply: cured salmon had long been a northern and Scottish product, but the London smokehouses were turning out the mild cold-smoked side that could be bought by the pound and used, as here, in small quantities as a flavouring rather than as a whole fish.