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Salmon Cutlets, with Shallot Sauce
Take a large fillet of salmon, remove the skin, then divide the fish transversely and slantwise into slices; beat these slightly, and pare them in an oval form. Salt the cutlets, dip them in oil, and place them on a gridiron previously warmed and rubbed with oiled paper; broil them on both sides for twelve or fifteen minutes, basting them with oil. Dish them, and send to table with the following sauce poured over them. Put into a stewpan two poured over them. Put into a stewpan two table-spoonfuls of chopped shallots and four of good vinegar; set the pan on the fire, and boil till the vinegar is reduced one-half. Remove the saucepan from the fire, and when its contents are about cold add the yolks of four eggs, which beat with a spoon; add also four spoonfuls of good oil. Set the preparation on a slow fire, and thicken the sauce, stirring all the time. Draw it back, and introduce into it by small quantities at a time half a glassful of oil alternated with the juice of half a lemon; finish with a little chopped tarragon and parsley.
A grilled salmon steak with what amounts to an early béarnaise made on oil rather than butter. Two things need attention: the broiling time, which is far too long by modern standards, and the sauce, which will scramble if the pan gets hot.
- The hinge: keep the sauce below a simmerThe yolks are thickened over direct heat with nothing but the reduced vinegar to protect them. Use a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water instead, and pull it off the moment it coats the spoon; above roughly 180F the yolks set into curds and the emulsion breaks.
- Twelve to fifteen minutes is too longTwelve to fifteen minutes is probably too long — the slices are cut on the slant and beaten flat, so they are thinner than a modern steak and a hot ridged pan or broiler will cook them in a few minutes a side. Test early rather than timing blind, and note that current food-safety guidance for fish is 145F internal.
- Gridiron and oiled paperThe oiled paper was rubbed on the hot bars so the fish would not weld to them. A well-heated cast-iron grill pan or a broiler rack, oiled the same way, does the job; the gridiron was set over the fire, so the equivalent is direct heat from below or a very hot pan, not a moderate oven.
- "Beat these slightly, and pare them in an oval form"Flatten each slice lightly with the side of a knife or a cutlet bat so it cooks evenly, then trim to a neat oval — a presentation convention that made fish slices resemble lamb cutlets. Skip the trimming and nothing is lost but the look.
- Ambiguous measuresThe bare 'spoonfuls' of oil are most likely tablespoons, matching the table-spoonfuls named earlier in the sauce; the 'half a glassful of oil' is genuinely unclear, since Victorian glass measures varied. Work by feel, adding the oil in a thin stream and stopping when the sauce is the consistency you want.
- A duplicated lineThe phrase "poured over them. Put into a stewpan two" is repeated in the original setting — a printer's error. Read it once.
- Strain or don'tNothing tells you to remove the shallots. Straining the reduction before adding the yolks gives a smooth sauce in the modern manner; leaving them in gives the coarser, more rustic version the text implies.
- YieldA large side fillet cut on the slant gives 6 to 8 cutlets, and the sauce as written is generous for that number. Serve the sauce warm, not hot, and never reheat it.
The sauce is a textbook lesson in a warm egg emulsion, built on a shallot-and-vinegar reduction finished with tarragon and parsley. That formula is the one generally identified as béarnaise, traditionally traced to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s, though here it is made with oil throughout instead of butter — closer in handling to a cooked mayonnaise, and a reminder that the classical sauce families were still fluid in English cookery books of the period. Salmon itself was not yet the everyday fish it has become; before refrigerated transport made Scottish and later farmed fish cheap, a large fillet cut into neat ovals and dressed with a compound sauce was a dish for a formal table, which is why the recipe bothers with paring each cutlet into shape.