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Salmon Cutlets, Broiled
Salmon cutlets are cut out of the middle or large end of the fish. Clean the salmon, scrape off the scales, and cut from the fish slices half an inch thick. Leave the skin on. Dip the cutlets in clarified butter, sprinkle pepper and salt over them, lay them on a hot gridiron, and broil gently over a clear fire. Turn them over every three or four minutes till they are done. Serve on a hot dish, with a little piece of butter upon each cutlet. No sauce is required, but if it is preferred, lobster or crab sauce may be sent to table in a tureen; or a sauce may be prepared as follows. Take a quarter of a pint of good gravy. Mix with it a tea-spoonful of vinegar, a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovy, half a tea-spoonful of Harvey's Sauce, and a tea-spoonful of finely-minced mixed pickles. Boil the sauce, thicken with a little flour, and serve. Time to boil the fish, fifteen to twenty minutes, according to thickness. Sufficient, two large cutlets for five or six persons.
A plain broiled fish steak from a period when salmon was cheap enough to be an everyday dish. The only real problem is the stated time, which belongs to a different method entirely.
- Ignore the stated time"Time to boil the fish, fifteen to twenty minutes" describes boiling, not broiling, and appears to have strayed in from another method; it has nothing to do with a half-inch steak over coals. The recipe's own instruction to turn every three or four minutes is the better guide: roughly three to four minutes a side. Pull them at 120-125F at the thickest point and they will carry to about 130F off the heat, though see the note on internal temperature below.
- What a cutlet isA cross-section steak cut through the backbone from the thick middle of a whole fish, skin on, bone in. A supermarket salmon steak is the same cut; a boneless fillet portion will work but cooks faster and is more likely to dry at the thin edge.
- Gridiron and fireA gridiron is a grate set over embers. A ridged cast-iron grill pan over medium heat, a charcoal grill, or an overhead broiler set 4 inches from the element all reproduce it. "A clear fire" means coals burned down past flame, so the butter does not flare.
- Clarified butterUsed because whole butter's milk solids blacken over live fire. Clarified butter or ghee still gives the cleanest result; the finishing knob of butter on each cutlet should be plain butter.
- Harvey's SauceA Victorian bottled anchovy-and-soy condiment, no longer made in its original form. Worcestershire sauce is the nearest survivor and belongs to the same family of anchovy-based bottled sauces. Essence of anchovy is anchovy paste, or colatura thinned slightly.
- "Good gravy" and the quarter-pintGravy here means a reduced brown meat stock, not thickened pan drippings. A quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, a little over half a US cup.
- YieldTwo cutlets for five or six people assumes a large fish and a multi-course dinner. Two supermarket salmon steaks of 8 oz each will serve two as a main course.
Cassell's appeared when British salmon still reached London in quantity, though its cheapest days were already behind it: ice-packed rail traffic from Scotland and Ireland kept London fishmongers supplied, and the century's oft-repeated (and probably exaggerated) tale of apprentices stipulating they not be fed salmon more than twice a week reflects how ordinary it had once been. The accompaniments are pure Victorian store-cupboard: lobster or crab sauce for a formal table, or failing that a sharp brown sauce built on bottled anchovy essence, vinegar and proprietary relishes such as Harvey's, which competed with Worcestershire and the various "store sauces" that every well-run household kept bottled. The recipe's flat statement that "no sauce is required" is worth noting in a book of this period, and reflects a genuine confidence in the fish itself.