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SALMON, BROILED (another way)
Oil each piece of salmon and wrap it in greased paper; broil gently and turn frequently. Time, fifteen minutes to give the fish a nice pale yellow colour. Serve with Dutch or caper sauce.
A one-line Victorian method that amounts to cooking salmon in an oiled paper wrapper over live heat. The wrapper is the whole point: it keeps the surface from scorching and lets the fish steam in its own moisture.
- "Broil" here means grillIn this book broiling is cooking on a gridiron over coals or a clear fire, with the heat below. An overhead broiler or a ridged grill pan both work; keep the heat moderate rather than fierce, since the paper is meant to insulate, not to char.
- The paperGreased kitchen paper was the standard wrapper. Parchment, brushed with oil, does the same job. Wrap loosely and fold the edges so steam is trapped but the packet can be turned without tearing.
- Turn frequently, and whySalmon cutlets cooked on a gridiron cook from one side at a time, so the instruction to turn often is what keeps the centre from overshooting while the outer flesh sets. Every two to three minutes is enough.
- Fifteen minutes is for thick cutletsFifteen minutes suits a thick piece -- the recipe says only 'each piece of salmon', but fifteen minutes over gentle heat points to a substantial cutlet rather than a thin fillet. A modern half-inch fillet is done in five or six minutes total. Cook to 125-130F at the thickest point if you want the flesh still translucent; the Victorian target, a 'pale yellow colour', is closer to fully set.
- Dutch sauceBroadly the ancestor of what we now call hollandaise: egg yolks, butter, lemon or vinegar, worked over gentle heat, though English versions of the period were often thickened with a little flour as well.
- Caper sauceA butter or veloute-based white sauce with capers and a little of their vinegar. It was the standard partner for boiled mutton as well, which tells you how broadly it was used.
- PortioningReckon 6 to 8 oz of salmon per person for a main course; the recipe speaks only of 'each piece', so portions were presumably cut to suit.
The title '(another way)' indicates this is one of several salmon methods given in succession, and it is the paper-wrapped variant of the gridiron classic, a nineteenth-century domestic cousin of cooking en papillote. Wrapping in greased paper was a common expedient for delicate fish and cutlets on an open fire, where the cook had no thermostat and no way to lower a coal bed quickly. The pairing with Dutch or caper sauce places the dish in the Anglo-French repertoire that English cookery books absorbed through the century: rich butter emulsions for fish, with the sharp caper version as the plainer alternative.