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SALMON, CUTLETS OF, FRIED (another way)
Cut the salmon into slices an inch thick. Pepper these, and bind a sage-leaf on each. Fry the fillets in hot fat till the flesh leaves the bone easily, or broil them on a gridiron over a clear fire. Place them on a hot dish, squeeze the juice of a lemon over them, and serve.
A very short Victorian formula that assumes the cook knows salmon and can judge doneness by eye. The main adjustment is timing: modern practice cooks salmon a good deal less than the original suggests.
- "Cutlets" means steaksThese are cross-cut steaks through the bone, about an inch thick, not boneless fillets despite the recipe's later use of that word. A whole side cut into portions works too, but the bone-in steak is what holds together in the pan and gives the "leaves the bone easily" test.
- Rethink the doneness testCooking until the flesh falls off the bone leaves salmon dry and chalky. An inch-thick steak needs roughly 3-4 minutes a side in hot fat, pulled while the centre is still faintly translucent and reads about 125F; carryover finishes it.
- Binding the sage leafA single fresh sage leaf laid on each steak and tied with kitchen string or fixed with a cocktail stick. Sage is assertive with oily fish, so one leaf per portion is plenty; remove the string before serving.
- The fat"Hot fat" in a book of this period would have meant clarified butter, beef dripping or lard. Clarified butter or a neutral oil with a knob of butter added late gives the same effect without burning at the temperature needed to colour the fish.
- Broiling on a gridironThe alternative is a bar grill over hot coals or a ridged cast-iron pan, not an overhead broiler. Oil the bars and the fish well; salmon skin welds to a cold grate.
- Season properlyThe original peppers the fish but never mentions salt. Salt both sides ten minutes before cooking, which also firms the surface and helps it brown.
- YieldOne inch-thick steak of 6-8 oz per person; the original squeezes lemon over the fish just before it goes to table, so if the fish must wait, hand round wedges rather than dressing everything in the kitchen.
Cassell's gives several fried-salmon entries in succession, and salmon was a familiar fish in nineteenth-century British kitchens: it was seasonal, and in the salmon-fishing districts of the north and Scotland it could at times be cheap enough to appear as everyday food, though in southern markets it was generally a costly fish. The pairing with sage is unusual to modern eyes, which expect dill, fennel or parsley with salmon, but sage was one of the standard English kitchen herbs and was used with rich and fatty foods on the old principle that a pungent, slightly bitter leaf cut the grease. The finishing squeeze of lemon does the same work.