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Salmon, Braised
Take a thick slice of salmon, weighing a little more than three pounds, wash it in salted water, and dry it in a cloth. Fold it in oiled paper, place it on a drainer over a saucepan of fast-boiling water, and let it steam until done enough. Drain it, and pour over it a sauce prepared as follows. Bruise a table-spoonful of capers, and stir them into half a pint of good melted butter. Add a tea-spoonful of anchovy, a tea-spoonful of mixed mustard, two tea-spoonfuls of soy, and a pinch of cayenne. Simmer the sauce gently for three or four minutes, add a glassful of sherry, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, and serve. Time to steam the salmon, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, salmon, 1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound when plentiful.
Despite the title, nothing here is braised: the fish is steamed over water and dressed with a sharp compound butter sauce. The sauce carries the dish, and the fish is easily overcooked.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not butterIn Victorian English cookery melted butter means a flour-thickened butter sauce, roughly a roux of 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour let down with half a pint of water or fish stock and finished with more butter. Plain liquid butter will split when the sherry and lemon juice go in.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. That is a generous quantity of sauce for 3 lb of fish, which suits the strong seasonings.
- A glassful of sherryA Victorian wine glass held about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz. Use a dry or medium sherry and add it at the end, as the recipe directs, after the brief simmer.
- Anchovy and soy"A tea-spoonful of anchovy" means anchovy essence, for which anchovy paste is the closest substitute. "Soy" is soy sauce, then sold in England as a table condiment. "Mixed mustard" is mustard powder already made up with water, i.e. prepared English mustard.
- Steaming timeThree-quarters of an hour will leave a 3 lb cut dry and chalky. A thick centre cut steams in roughly 25 to 35 minutes; pull it at 120-125F at the bone for translucent flesh, 130F if you prefer it firm. Rest it five minutes before draining.
- Oiled paperButtered parchment does the same job and is easier to handle. Wrap loosely so steam circulates, and set the parcel on a rack or trivet clear of the water.
- CapersBruising rather than chopping releases the flavour without shredding them. Rinse brined capers first, or the sauce, already carrying anchovy and soy, turns aggressively salty.
- YieldA 3 lb cut of salmon on the bone serves six to eight as a main course. Serve the sauce separately as well as poured over, since it is highly seasoned.
The price note is the interesting part: a shilling to sixteen pence a pound, a price the recipe itself qualifies with "when plentiful," belongs to a period when net fisheries on the Tay, Severn and Irish rivers, and later ice-packed rail shipments, kept city fishmongers supplied through the summer season. The sauce belongs to a distinctly English family of store-cupboard dressings built on melted butter and bottled flavourings -- anchovy essence, soy, mushroom ketchup -- that Victorian kitchens kept to hand and combined more or less at will. Capers with salmon and with boiled fish generally was long-standing practice; the soy and mustard reflect the period's taste for pungency with rich, oily fish.