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Salmon, Crimped, with Caper Sauce
Marinade your slices of salmon in a little olive-oil with salt and pepper. Three-quarters of an hour before you send up, broil them on both sides over a very slow fire. When they are done, take off the skin, and drain them on a clean towel to draw out all the oil. Dish them, and cover with caper sauce. Let it be understood that the gridiron must be on a slope, with a receptacle under the fore-feet to receive the oil, which if it fell into the fire would produce a smoke which would spoil the fish, and fill the kitchen, and a disagreeable odour would arise.
A plain grilled salmon steak with a caper sauce, written for a coal range and a gridiron. The technique translates directly to a grill or a heavy ridged pan; the timing does not.
- "Crimped" is a step you no longer performCrimping meant scoring a very freshly killed fish across the sides and plunging it into cold salted water, which contracted the flesh and gave it a firm, flaky texture prized in the period. It only works on fish killed within hours, so buy good thick steaks or centre-cut fillet portions and skip it.
- "Three-quarters of an hour before you send up"Read as the point at which to begin, over a fire slow enough that the fish takes a long time; the book does not say what the interval is for. Inch-thick salmon over medium-low coals wants roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side.
- A "very slow fire"Coals burned down to grey ash with no flame, giving steady moderate heat rather than a sear. On a gas grill that is medium-low; in a pan, medium. High heat splits and dries salmon of this thickness.
- DonenessVictorian cooking of this kind took salmon to firm and opaque throughout. Modern practice often pulls it at 52-54C (125-130F) at the centre, when the flesh still yields and just begins to flake, and lets it rest a few minutes.
- The sloped gridironThe point of the instruction is real: oil dripping onto live coals flares and smokes, and the smoke tastes of scorched fat rather than wood. A drip tray, a cooler zone on the grill, or simply blotting the excess marinade off before the fish goes on achieves the same thing.
- Draining on a towelWith modern oils this matters less, but the habit is sound. A brief rest on paper removes surface oil so the caper sauce sits on the fish instead of sliding off it.
- Caper sauceIn the period this means "melted butter", a butter-and-flour sauce, sharpened with vinegar and finished with drained capers. The recipe gives no proportions.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Allow one 150-175 g (6 oz) steak per person and about 60 ml (a quarter cup) of sauce each.
Crimped salmon was a Victorian luxury that depended entirely on speed: the fish had to be scored and chilled while barely dead, which is why crimping is associated with fishing towns and with the kitchens of the great cities. Cookery writers of the period treated crimping as the mark of a properly handled salmon, and "crimped salmon" appears on hotel and club menus as a claim of freshness as much as a description of method. The pairing with capers is older still and follows the general rule of the English kitchen that oily fish wants an acid foil, the same logic that puts gooseberry with mackerel. Cassell's, generally dated to the 1870s and compiled as a household reference rather than a chef's book, keeps the instruction on the sloped gridiron, where a single flare-up could ruin an expensive fish.